The Papua New Guinea National Department of Health presented its on-going work on building capacity of the health information workforce on day 3 of the World Health Organization 73rd Regional Committee Meeting which is being held in Manila, Philippines this week.
In the session on WHO’s ‘Work in Countries’, Minister for Health and HIV/AIDS Dr. Tom Lino, shared with Members States the progress PNG had made so far.
“As we have moved to an electronic health information system, real-time, analysis and interpretation are possible and so our data needs and the skills required of health information officers, have evolved”, said Dr Tom.
He said he was proud of the dedicated and passionate health information workforce.
However, many staff have not received the capacity building they need to meaningfully analyze and use this data to improve health programmes and services – and ultimately people’s health.
“In recognition of this, we approached WHO for advice on developing a clear pathway to build the capacity of our health information workforce”, said Dr Tom.
The RCM session was presented alongside WHO-PNG Country Representative, Dr Sevil Huseynova and Ms Manah Dindi from the Performance, Monitoring and Research Branch of NDoH, who gave a detailed presentation via video link on the work carried out through her Branch to address the issues highlighted by Dr Tom.
Source: Papua New Guinea National Department of Health