The 32 participants and facilitation team in Cotonou

The 65th PBF course took place in Cotonou from 15 to 27 January 2018 with 32 participants from Guinea Conakry (12), Senegal (10), Madagascar (4), Chad (2), CAR (2x), Cameroon (1) and Burundi (1). Herewith the detailed course report (rapport du cours).

M. GUEYE El hadji Ndiaga from Senegal – Participant 2000

We had also the pleasure to welcome the 2000th participant to the PBF courses since 2007 and this was El Hadji Ndiaga GUEYE, the RBF portal expert from the Senegal programme.

The daily course evaluations and the final evaluation of the course were favorable compared to the previous course held in Cotonou in August 2017. The impact of the 65th PBF course has been reflected in the good quality of the action plans carried out by the groups of countries (see the detailed course report).

Two participants obtained a certificate of distinction with a score of 90% or higher for the end-of-training test. They were Dr. Mohamed CAMARA, who works in the project FBR pilot of Mamou in Guinea and Dr. Florent Eric RABEARITSOA, who works for Madagascar’s FBR program in the Ministry of Health. Continue reading →

Kenya game parks

OVERVIEW OF THE NINE PBF COURSES DURING 2017

There were nine 14-day PBF courses in 2017, during which we welcomed 344 participants from 18 countries. Of these seven were French spoken courses with 285 participants and two were English spoken with 59 participants.

Five courses were open to any participant who applied (Douala, Cotonou, Bukavu, and Mombasa 2x). The other four courses were organized for participants selected by their respective governments (Gabon 2x, Cameroun Ngaoundéré and in the Central African Republic). 

In 2017, during the Bukavu October course in DRC, we celebrated that 10 years ago the first PBF course took place. Since then, close to 2000 participants attended 65 courses.

The first 2017 course was organized by the Gabonese government in Lambaréné in January and once again in July. The second course was organized with the Regional Fund for Health Promotion of Littoral in Douala in March. The other courses were organized with the Regional Fund for Health Promotion of Adamaoua in Ngaoundéré in Cameroun in July; with BEST-SD in Cotonou Benin in August; with the Agence d’Achat de Performance of South Kivu province in DRC in October and with the CAR government in Boali in November. 

The participants in 2017 came from Cameroun 94x, Gabon 73x, the Central African Republic 47x, Nigeria 30x, Thad 19x and the Democratic Republic of Congo 18x. Smaller groups came from Guinea 11x, Zimbabwe 8x, Senegal 7x, Burkina Faso 6x, Ivory Coast 6x, South Sudan 5x, Liberia 5x, Congo Brazzaville 4x, Lesotho 4x, Uganda 3x, Niger 3x and Ethiopia 1x. The details of the PBF programs in these 18 countries can be found in the course reports to be found at this website. Continue reading →

The course participants in Mombasa

The 64th performance-based financing (PBF) course took place from Monday, November 20 to Friday, December 1, 2017, in Mombasa, Kenya.

Five country groups conducted an analysis of their health systems and produced detailed action plans on how to advance PBF in their respective countries. Hereby the detailed course report.

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The 63rd PBF course took place in Bukavu from 9 to 21 October. Hereby the course report (rapport du cours).

There were 19 participants from the DRC (16), the Republic of Congo (2) and the Central African Republic (1).

The course was a success. The action plans proposed by the working groups are of a high standard. The course had relatively few participants (19), which allowed for intense exchanges between the participants and the facilitation team. This was appreciated by the participants and their satisfaction with the facilitation was 90% and their satisfaction for participation was 93%. The economics module was considered difficult by a large part of the participants. We regret that economics and health economics is not considered important in the curriculum of most health sector training institutes. We consider this to be a major challenge in making health systems more efficient. Several participants also indicated that the indices management tool module requires more time. Another wish of the participants was that it is necessary to develop a PBF course more specifically for the PBF in the administration sector.

  The 19 participants to the PBF course in Bukavu

The presence of Dr. Paul Pilipili Hangi and Dr. Claude Ntabuyantwa of the PBF Unit from Kinshasa was a great asset to share their national experiences as well as to discuss the challenges of the PBF system in the DRC.

The course produced two distinctions and the average posttest result was slightly above the scores of previous PBF courses.

Strengths and challenges of PBF in the DRC

PBF in the DRC covers 27.5 million (= 35% of the total) inhabitants with World Bank funding of US $ 390 million for the period 2015-2019, which corresponds to $ US 3.00 per person per year. There are 169 Health Districts covered by the PBF program and the PBF provinces have created CDV Agencies (Contract Development and Verification Agencies). The program supports 180 hospitals and 2,818 primary health facilities and is the largest PBF program worldwide.

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The 50 participants

The 60^th PBF course was held in Cotonou from 21 August to 1 September 2017 with 50 participants from Chad (17), Guinea (11), Senegal (7), Côte d’Ivoire (4) , Burkina Faso (4), Cameroon (3), Niger (3) and Congo Brazzaville (1).

Hereby the details course report (rapport du cours)

The demand for the 60th course in Cotonou was so high that we had to refer several participants to the next PBF courses in Bukavu October 9th (announcement), Mombasa November 20th (announcement) and Cotonou January 8th, 2018 (annonce). Due to the high number of participants, it was, therefore, difficult to satisfy the expectations of all participants during the plenary sessions and at the same time to finish all course modules. This course ended on Friday instead of on Saturday and there were high-level decision makers among the participants that demanded attention during the plenary sessions. These factors combined explain why during the evaluation the methodology and the timekeeping criteria scored lower than in previous courses and that the final exam result of 68% was slightly below the previous course averages. Continue reading →