The Sunday News
Thobekile Khumalo, Sunday News Reporter
THE Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) in partnership with Japan last week launched a 5s Kaizen Total Management Programme at United Bulawayo Hospitals aimed at addressing operational challenges at the country’s health institutions and improve service delivery.
Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap major improvements. It is based on co-operation and commitment and stands in contrast to approaches that use radical changes or top-down edicts to achieve transformation.
Speaking during the launch, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Agnes Mahomva said the launch marked the first indispensable milestone in the ministry’s improvement journey.
“Traditionally, MOHCC has always been facing challenges arguably emanating from the external environment with also how we carry out our business so 5s Kaizen Total Quality Management will arguably be a reference point of a gradual but unstoppable gravitation to service excellence in the ministry with critical efficiency and effectiveness characterising our operations. Japanese are renowned world over for championing quality and we are privileged to have this opportunity of partnering and getting expert technical assistance from the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA),” she said.
She said the pilot hospitals have already adopted the philosophy.
“United Bulawayo Hospital and Gweru General Hospital have adopted the philosophy seamlessly and we have the evidence that we are best placed to benefit because these hospitals have shown improvement in customer satisfaction, reduced patients waiting times for services, improved staff morale, a clean clutter free environment and reduced wastage expiries,” said Dr Mahomva.
JICA expert, Mr Talconori Sasaki said the programme was of importance as it promotes improved health services under limited resources.
“We have launched this programme in more than 21 countries across Africa and it is very important because it is not hard to implement and can work under limited resources,” he said.
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