Feature story

International Health Partnership launches new web site

07 May 2008

20080417-ihp-200.jpg
The new International Health Partnership
public web site shares information on
strengthening health systems and services

The International Health Partnership (IHP+) has launched a public web site to facilitate the dissemination of information and tools related to strengthening health systems and services.

The IHP+ is a partnership which includes 13 partner countries, United Nations agencies including UNAIDS, bilateral donors, civil society and private sector partners.

Launched in September 2007, the initiative aims to increase donor, country and international coordination on health and development issues in order to make progress on achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals—reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and halting and reversing the spread of HIV.

Participants signed a compact agreeing to work together within countries’ national plans to improve coordination in order to address problems related to health worker staffing, infrastructure, health commodities, logistics, tracking progress, and effective financing.

Each of the 13 participating countries has provided a Country stocktaking report that documents the current state of health systems strengthening and describes progress made to date along with the continued challenges.

The web site will serve as a forum for participating countries to present the results of stock-taking exercises and, in some cases, draft road maps to development of the compact. As these documents become available, they will be added to the web site.

The IHP+ work plan, progress reports as well as meeting minutes and other official documents can all be accessed on this new web site.

It is hoped that this site will become a useful tool to meet one of the objectives of IHP+: “Ensure mutual accountability and monitoring of performance.”

“Sharing knowledge through this partnership can help lead to better coordinated and more transparent responses to strengthening national health care systems,” said UNAIDS Executive Office Director, Tim Martineau.

“UNAIDS is happy to be a partner in this initiative which emphasizes actions which are country-led and country-focused and which will help deliver on our shared goal of achieving universal access treatment targets.”

IHP+ aims to scale-up coverage and use of health services in order to deliver improved health outcomes against the health-related Millennium Development Goals and universal access commitments.

Partners will work together to ensure that health plans are well-designed, well-supported and well-implemented and to make their work more effective and better aligned with developing countries’ established priorities.