Harare, Zimbabwe(News of the South)-Health institutions across the country have reported positive changes in their operations in the aftermath of implementing the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) led 5S Kaizen project whose close-out meeting was held at Harare Hospital last week.
The 5S Kaizen project seeks to bring order and sanity to operations through such basic operations as removal of unwanted clutter, labelling of sites, zoning and cleaning the environment.
Amongst the participating hospitals that implemented the project are Gwanda Hospital, UBH and Harare Central Hospital.
Rodwell Chirume the Director of Quality Assurance in the Ministry of Health hailed the project for the positive results.
“We have improved our institutions, we are even reducing waiting time, so our quality improvement teams are on the ground, they are training departments ensuring that they implement the 5S,” he said.
An expert from JICA Mr Sasaki said they were inculcating a culture of teamwork in the leadership through the project.
“This will contribute to the work procedure in the medical facility and by doing this we will lessen infection rates in the hospital,” he said.
Speaking at the closeout meeting Dr Chimberengwa from Gwanda said the 5S Kaizen project was not an independent project outside general practice of health but was part of the system ensuring efficiency.
“Some assumed that 5S had nothing to do with clinical matters but that’s not it, its very much part of how we operate as health institution and feeds into the pyramid of what we do as health practitioners,” he said.
Dr Dube from UBH concurred and called for extensive extensions of the project to others.
“Those who have been taught should also extend their knowledge and teach others. We have seen much positive changes since we began implementing the 5S at our own institution,” he added.
The country’s health institutions have been facing many challenges due to insufficient fiscal support leading to absence of medicine and constant strikes by health practitioners over poor working conditions.
Comments
About Author
