Government launches health registry

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) launched an initiative on 18 and 19 December to map the country's health infrastructure. "The first step will be the nationwide assessment of the existing infrastructures, both public and private," Beatrice Dykczyk-Dor, the technical assistant of the French Cooperation Service (FCS) working with the CAR Ministry of Health, told IRIN on Friday. She said that until now the country had had no "health map", which was a vital tool for the management of health policies. The mapping would also enable the ministry to establish the numbers of medical personnel working in the country. "We have registered 3,142 medical personnel in CAR, but among them there are 350 whose official post is unknown," she said. A report issued at the end of a seminar on Thursday to launch the initiative stated that "the health map will determine the nature and, if possible, the importance, of each infrastructure and necessary activities [to be carried out] to meet the needs of the population". The health map is expected to be completed in March 2003 and will be reviewed at least every five years. The seminar was attended by 80 participants, including the provincial heads of health zones, officials from the ministry, as well as representatives from the World Health Organisation, the EU and the FCS. Haute Kotto and Basse Kotto, both of which are rebel-controlled, were the only provinces that were unrepresentative. With 623,000 sq km and a population estimated at 3.5 million, CAR had 187 qualified physicians, of whom only 121 were working, Dykczyk-Dor said. There were also 282 medical assistants, 237 midwives, 19 paediatric nurses, 275 nurses and 125 sanitation workers in the country, she said. She added that a major difficulty in CAR remained the long distances separating populations from health infrastructure, especially in rural areas. For the exercise to succeed, the ministry is being supported by the EU, which has already granted four million francs CFA (US $6,153) both for a preliminary study and for last week’s seminar.