(CPV) - The seventh annual hospital forum within the context of the Vietnamese-German Development’s health program opened in Hanoi on November 17th in order to strengthening nation’s health system.

Whereas earlier forums focused on modern technologies for hospital management, hospital financing, infrastructure and quality management topics, this year’s hospital forum focuses on comprehensive care, human resource management and gender mainstreaming.

Among the 150 participants of the two-day event are experts from the Ministry of Health, Departments of Health (DoH), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), practitioners and managers from health facilities of the program’s partner provinces Phu Yen, Thanh Hoa, Yen Bai, Nghe An and Thai Binh and representatives of international, bilateral and non-governmental organizations.

Thematic inputs concentrate on the usage of software for human resource management and on the integration and monitoring of the gender perspective into every stage of hospital management processes.

GIZ supported provincial and district hospitals and an external reviewer will share their experiences and observations about recent interventions to improve the quality of care. Several discussion and review sessions allow participants to identify priorities for further action within and beyond program implementation.

‘We are already well-connected within our project areas. But still, face-to-face meetings are very important to exchange insights and lessons learnt beyond provincial and hospital borders. It is always a great pleasure to watch colleagues from different policy levels and with different perspectives engage in heated discussions about health topics that matter most to them. After the forum you would always come home to your workplace with a different perspective,” said Dr Anna Frisch, GIZ Chief Technical Advisor of Vietnamese-German development cooperation’s health program in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese-German development cooperation’s health program “Strengthening provincial health systems” has been supporting Vietnamese partners for six years and is commissioned and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

During the implementation period from 2013 to 2017, the program aims at strengthening the capacity of provincial health departments and decentralised health facilities in cost efficient management and needs-based delivery of quality health services, with a major focus on preventive and curative services./.

( VNF )