Training front-line health workers in Mali

CIDA is helping to improve Mali's health system by training front-line health workers. "It's quite a challenge to meet, but we're encouraged by how willing people are here!" said Noëlla Gagnon, a Canadian educational development advisor. In the first phase of this CIDA-funded project, implemented by the Groupe Consultation CCISD and Cégep de Saint-Jérôme (French only) three training schools were merged into one National Health Sciences Training Institute (INFSS). Future nurses, midwives, and pharmacy and laboratory technicians used to attend different schools but are now grouped together with future anesthesia, ophthalmology, and otorhinolaryngology technicians to benefit from complete and coherent training.

Ms Gagnon, a former nurse from Quebec, has many years of experience in managing and teaching nurses. As part of her work at INFSS, she reviewed 20 different programs, developed theoretical and practical teaching manuals and created clinical internships, workshops, and trainer training. "It isn't a seven-year project for nothing," she jokes. But the scope of the task does not daunt her.

Her colleague, Claude Chayer, is equally motivated. An organizational development advisor, he identified the new institute's administrative needs, recommended human resources management methods and developed computer-based tools, regulations, organization charts, and work descriptions. His goal is for INFSS to manage itself. "We plan to put sustainable mechanisms in place," he says. "We're aiming for the people of Mali to own these procedures."

In addition to making the institute independent, the two advisors hope it will have a national impact. Amadou Sow, the institute's Secretary General, shares this hope: "We want to extend INFSS's leadership and credibility throughout Mali."

When the project first began, the challenges were immense. A few metres from a crowded classroom, where the professor demonstrated how sterile instruments must be delicately handled, hens strutted across a campus with no waste containers. The lack of available medical equipment was just as much of a major obstacle as lack of hygiene, according to Ms Gagnon.

Today, there are enough classrooms and equipment for all of the students to learn comfortably; as well there is a new library, learning centre, computer laboratory, nursing station and canteen.

A mid-term evaluation in November 2008 found that "the INFSS now has the principal tools and managerial systems it needs to apply a results-based management approach". Seven of its eighteen teaching programs have been revised to use a skills-based approach rather than a theoretical approach (including nursing, midwifery, radiation, sanitation and hygiene). A group of teachers has been trained in curriculum development, and the first class learning from the new skills-based approach graduated in July 2009.

CIDA approved a second phase of this project from 2010 to 2017 to continue the important work of developing an efficient health care training facility and providing graduates with skills-based training. According to the 2008 evaluation, INFSS "could become a model for not just Mali, but the entire region".

This project is just one of many CIDA-funded projects in Africa aimed at strengthening African health systems and achieving progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. It is part of CIDA's priority theme of securing the future of children and youth.