Overview

Tech-Serve helped strengthen the Ministry of Public Health’s (MoPH) health system stewardship at all levels, leading to improvements in overall population health. Tech-Serve worked with the MoPH to improve access to quality health services and improve the outcomes of key MoPH indicators in the 13 Afghan provinces where USAID provides health service support. 

Activities

• Strengthening Central and Provincial Health Systems: Tech-Serve assistance increased the capacity of MoPH managers and leaders at the central and provincial levels to plan, manage, monitor, evaluate, and coordinate health services, in order to reduce mortality and morbidity especially among women and children under five.
• MoPH Grants and Contracts Management Unit (GCMU): Tech-Serve helped strengthen the capacity of the MoPH’s GCMU to manage and oversee on-budget donor assistance.
• Family Planning &Community-Based Health Care: Tech-Serve supported two of the MoPH’s  family planning and community-based health care goals: 1) expanding coverage of the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) through community-based health care; and 2) expanding access to family planning and birth spacing services throughout the country.
• Hospital Management: The Hospital Management Strengthening Program focused on two main goals: 1) ensuring that the hospital sector has clear policies, strategies, and basic standards for accrediting hospitals; and 2) building autonomy and capacity in MoPH-managed hospitals.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: Tech-Serve supported MoPH’s development of the Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) database, which increases evidence-based health decisions.

Accomplishments

• Contributed significantly to improvements in the delivery of health services pertaining to family planning and reproductive health and contributed to declines in mortality rates.
• Increased women’s participation in health.  Increased the percentage of women community health workers (CHWs) as well as the number of facilities with at least one female health worker.
• Worked with the MoPH’s GCMU to award 18 Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) and 6 Essential Package of Health Services (EPHS) health service delivery contracts worth a total of $236 million.
• Improved data quality in the HMIS, with accuracy from third party evaluations at more than 90 percent, a level of accuracy similar to that in China and Mexico.
• Delivered $20 million in pharmaceuticals to BPHS and EPHS facilities.
• Endorsement by the MoPH and Ministry of Finance of the devolution of procurement and finance responsibilities to fourteen national and specialty hospitals.