Lesotho
Landlocked inside South Africa, the Kingdom of Lesotho is a small country with high plateaus, hills and spectacular mountain ranges. Known as Basutoland until independence from the UK in 1966, Lesotho is one of the least developed countries in the world. With a predominantly rural population, it retains its rugged, fenceless countryside because of a tradition of communal grazing. Many mountain villages can only be reached by foot, on horseback, or by small airplane. Most of Lesotho has not been touched by modern machines, but developers have had to lay down roads to reach mineral and water resources.
Lesotho’s health care system faces an urgent need for change and growth. Countries in Southern Africa have some of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, but human resources to address the epidemic are often limited in numbers, training and logical distribution. Demands from the HIV/AIDS epidemic could push Lesotho's health care system to the brink of collapse.
IntraHealth is working with Lesotho’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to improve the delivery of HIV/AIDS services by strengthening the capacity of the country’s health care system: building its workforce, bolstering the management and information systems and planning for future growth. To achieve this, the IntraHealth-led Capacity Project and the Southern African Human Capacity Development Coalition (SA-HCD) are:
- Developing recruitment and deployment strategies and developing leadership and management capacity for improved management of the health workforce
- Assessing individual hospital climates, standards of care and employee satisfaction; creating tailored plans to address each site’s needs
- Developing HIV/AIDS workplace programs
- Identifying and filling in human resource gaps within the health care system
- Strengthening the human resources information system
- Enhancing health worker skills and supporting health worker performance
- Facilitating the revision of a decentralized organizational structure for the Ministry of Health
- Developing the capacity for HIV/AIDs training in pre-service educational institutions
- Initiating and implementing quality and performance improvement initiatives.
Donor/Project: USAID (Capacity Project, Southern Africa Human Capacity Development Coalition Project)
Partners, Capacity Project: Training Resources Group, Inc. (TRG)
Partners, Southern Africa Human Capacity Development Coalition: East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA); the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD); the Council of Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa (COHSASA); Management Sciences for Health (MSH); TRG.
Selected health statistics for Lesotho (WHO, accessed July 2007):
Life expectancy, in years (m/f): 42/41
Probability of dying under 5 years of age (per 1000 live births): 132
Adult prevalence of HIV/AIDS: 26.3–31.7%
Maternal mortality (per 100,000 live births): 550