Professionals meet in Belize City for Health Metrics workshop
Better information, better decisions, better health: that’s the motto of the World Health Organization’s Health Metrics Network and it’s why statisticians and healthcare providers from nine countries are meeting in Belize City this week. The four-day seminar was jointly planned by PAHO and Belize’s Ministry of Health and this morning the coordinators filled us in on what they are trying to achieve.
Dr. Paul Edwards, Manager, Central Health Region
“These participants will learn about the Health Metrics Network health information strategic planning tool. This tool is one of the results of what we know as the health metrics initiative. What it entails to do is to build capacity and expertise and also to enhance the availability, the quality, the dissemination and the use of information for decision making. When we talk about public health, decision-making is critical because it allows for policy making, it allows for programming and planning and also for accountability.”
Dr. Beverly Barnett, PAHO Rep, Belize
“If Belize has a national development plan or a national health plan, in two years time how are you going to know whether you are on the right track, in five years time, ten years time. You need information to be able to monitor and evaluate all these things. And you need the information to be accurate and to be fed back to the people who provide that information and to all audiences including the general public.”
Englebert Emmanuel, Focal Point, H.M.N. Project, Belize
“When you talk about health information systems, you don’t only talk about software, we talk about the processes, which includes both the vital statistics, the Statistical Institute of Belize, the Ministry of Health, Social Security. So it looks from a multi-sectoral approach and we are here trying to see how we can strengthen because we have identified that health information in weak in our country and we need to work as a group to try and improve the health information system so that we can have better data and information.”
At the end of the workshop, the countries will leave with an understanding of the Health Metrics Network as well as a draft strategic plan which they will then implement in their respective countries. Belize launched its first health information system almost a decade ago with assistance from PAHO. As a country, we became part of the WHO metrics initiative in 2007.