GHAP’s First Pilot Project Yields Recommendations
Regular readers of the Global Health Newsletter know that listening to the keynote address at the 2006 Global Health Conference changed my life. I am trained as a hospital administrator and I have visited two mission hospitals, Ilula Lutheran Hospital in Ilula, Tanzania, and Kijabe Medical Center in Kijabe, Kenya. I saw a need and knew that there was a way to partner with oversees mission health administrators to enhance their practices in managing their health facilities. Discussions with Tim Iverson and others led to the formation of an Advisory Team to further develop this concept.

In October of 2007, Global Health launched “Global Health Administration Partners (GHAP), a program to provide leadership and management assistance to mission hospitals using teams of volunteers with skills suited to each institution’s expressed needs. Consistent with GHM’s policy, the program works by invitation only from the leaders of overseas health care programs, and focuses on training and consultation in areas defined by them.

Two requests for assistance were received in the Pilot Phase of our program. The General Secretary Iringa Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, Nayman Chavalla, asked GHAP to help map out a new organizational structure for Ilula Lutheran Hospital. The Assessment Team of Magdeline Aagard, Bill Essendelft and I went to Ilula Lutheran Hospital in February 2008.

We interviewed the Hospital management team, the General Secretary of the Diocese and other leaders associated with the Hospital to form recommendations for more effective reporting structures moving forward and a clearer definition of roles and responsibilities. In addition, we assessed and provided recommendations to improve the morale of the Hospital staff, enhance the financial condition of the Hospital, better manage the Hospital’s many volunteers and provide early feedback on a proposed Nursing School on the Hospital grounds. The reaction by all parties was very positive. Although there is much work to be done, we were very excited to see that the management team had already enacted several of our recommendations before we even left Ilula.

For example, we noticed that the Nurse Matron, Faith Dewasi, not only managed all nursing staff and patient care efforts, she also made sure that our guest houses were cleaned and ready for occupancy. We learned that she didn’t always know when volunteers were arriving or why they were coming. She took care of these details in the evenings when she could have been home with her family. We recommended that the hospital administrator, Adrian Layapembile, immediately take over the responsibility of managing all volunteers including conducting tours, preparing the guest houses and preparing schedules for volunteer activities. In addition, we recommended that the Hospital develop a list of recommended volunteer activities and let potential volunteers know how they could best assist the Hospital – either through accomplishing specific tasks or through bringing specific medical expertise and supplies.

Simultaneously, a second Pilot team composed of Rev. Jerry Paul (retired hospital CEO of Deaconess Health System in St. Louis) and Doctors Hans and Martha Aas (Duluth) were assisting the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon as they worked through health system governance issues – see the accompanying article from Jerry elsewhere in this newsletter. I’m looking forward to seeing how God uses GHAP to help his people around the world! Our next phase will be to consolidate the learnings from our Pilot projects, make changes to our approach as appropriate, solicit requests from mission hospitals, solicit funds, recruit additional Consultants and expand our program. For more information about this exciting addition to the GHM ministry, contact me at cindy.ghap@yahoo.com.