By Immaculate Kibue

Dr Maureen Nafula AHMP Director

Lack of proper leadership and managerial capacity is the major problem facing Kenya's healthcare system today. This was said by Dr Maureen Nafula, the Director of Strathmore Business School (SBS) Advanced Healthcare Management Program (AHMP) which kicked off on Monday, 22nd October 2007 at Strathmore University.

Welcoming the pioneer participants to the program, Dr Nafula emphasized that there was need to equip healthcare practitioners with managerial skills to be better placed in handling resources. Although Kenya's healthcare system is arguably the best in sub-Sahara Africa outside South Africa, it can be improved a great deal. She cited the example of the Kenya's poor absorption of Global Aid funds and said it was a management problem.

Like other programs offered by SBS, AHMP is skills-based and participatory centered. This means it is designed to give participants a broad portfolio of skills to execute their strategic and operational mandates for the success of the organizations they serve.

Through this program, healthcare professionals will acquire specialized skills in strategic leadership, finance, management of systems and processes so they can lead effectively, improve quality, increase productivity and improve utilization of healthcare. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) occasional paper no. 4 on Management Sciences for Health, observes that "there is a view in some international health circles that the best way for developed countries to help developing countries attain their health goals is to provide ample drugs, resources, and short-term health and technical assistance workers".

"These inputs are important but need to be augmented to produce sustainable results. Doctors, nurses, and increasingly, non-clinical managers need to be better prepared  to lead teams to achieve results and effectively lead change so that they are able to succeed in achieving health goals," the paper says.

The AHMP has been facilitated by SBS in collaboration with Africa Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) and IESE Business School of Barcelona, Spain. It will run in three, five-day modules. The first module ran last week. The second module will run in mid-November and the last module will run in January.