Building capacity and strengthening health systems in a post-conflict environment

Background: After a 14-year conflict that destroyed most of the country's infrastructure, Liberia is gradually recovering. In order to ensure basic health services to all its citizens, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) developed the National Health and Social Welfare Policy Plan (NSWPP). Rebuilding Basic Health Services (RBHS) is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded initiative supporting MOHSW towards rebuilding Liberian health system. This presentation addresses one of the three strategies of RBHS - capacity building and health systems strengthening.

Strategy and methods: Building capacity is a vital component of strengthening a health system. RBHS is building capacity of MOHSW at three levels – individual, organization, and system – to promote country ownership and decentralization of health services. Our strategy is based on the six building block framework for strengthening health systems developed by World Health Organization (WHO) and incorporates elements from other international tools adapted to the Liberian health system. We are using a mixed methods approach to develop indicators that measure baseline capacity of MOHSW and track improvement in capacity over a period of two years.

Results: Capacity assessment at different levels of MOHSW will be conducted in March 2012 and implementation will start in June 2012. Although we do not have complete results yet, we will have the assessments complete and data analyzed by June 2012, enabling us to build a capacity building strategy by July 2012. Results will be available well ahead of the conference.

Implications: Liberia has the potential to serve as an example for rebuilding health systems in post-conflict countries. The tools and strategy used to build capacity of Liberian health system has the potential to be adapted to other post-conflict countries using the WHO six building block framework.