Nepal Program Focus

The Government of Nepal, with the support of the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), has made a commitment to improve the country’s health outcomes through health policies targeting access to primary care and attention to the unique needs of vulnerable groups like women and under-served populations.  Recent successes like the country’s drop in maternal mortality earned Nepal a Millennium Development Goal award at the 2010 UN Summit and reaffirmed the Ministry’s dedication. MLI is working with the Ministry to further strengthen its capacity through demand driven programs that complement the Ministry’s efforts.  MLI’s activities in Nepal include:

• Effective Negotiations by supporting a series of negotiation skills trainings for MoHP staff and representatives from the national Administrative Staff College.  The trainings provide tangible lessons and case studies that help staff improve their negotiations with development partners and stakeholders in their day-to-day work, for example coordinating the health sector Joint Financing Arrangement and managing critical health programs.

• Knowledge Management by enhancing access to vital health policy information among Ministry staff. This effort has included a landscaping exercise to identify the literature that is most valuable to policy makers and the knowledge management tools used by other organizations that are most locally adaptable.  Additionally, MLI has facilitated dialogue between the Ministry and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency of Nigeria, which is also exploring knowledge management strategies.

• Communications by providing technical support to increase the communications capacity of the MoHP.

• Capacity Development by helping the Ministry to develop a strategic framework and strategy for building capacity to successfully implement Nepal’s Health Sector Programme – Implementation Plan 2 (2010-2015).