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Full Text (34 pages, PDF)
Cover and Contents
Introduction
Objectives of the Meeting
Development of the Meeting:
The role of IMCI and the initiative Healthy Children: Goal 2002 in the improvement of child health in America (Dr. Stephen Corber, Director, Division of Disease Prevention
and Control, PAHO/WHO)
The initiative Healthy Children: Goal 2002 and the IMCI strategy: progress and future prospects (Dr. Yehuda Benguigui, Regional Advisor, HCT/IMCI, PAHO/WHO)
Information and instruments for the monitoring and evaluation of the IMCI strategy and of the initiative Healthy Children: Goal 2002—Availability and limitations (Dr. Juan Carlos Bossio, Consultant, HCT/IMCI, PAHO/WHO)
Progress in the community component of the IMCI strategy: experiences, instruments, and results (Mr. Christopher Drasbek, Technical Officer, HCT/IMCI, PAHO/WHO)
Introduction of IMCI in health workers training: progress with medical and nursing Schools (Dr. Yehuda Benguigui, Regional Advisor, HCT/IMCI, PAHO/WHO)
IMCI strategy: prospects and additional actions vis-à-vis new priorities and the international agenda (Dr. Yehuda Benguigui, Regional Advisor, HCT/IMCI, PAHO/WHO)
Conclusions
Recommendations
Members of IMCI TAG
Annexes:
I: Agenda
II: Terms of Reference for the Technical Advisory Group on Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI TAG)
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Technical Advisory Group on Integrated Management of
Childhood Illness
(IMCI TAG):
Report of the First Meeting
(Miami Children's Hospital,
Miami, FL, 5-6 September 2001)
Objectives
- • To present, analyze and discuss the proposed terms of reference for IMCI TAG so as to properly shape IMCI TAG’s
organizational and operational features.
- Present and review the current state of IMCI’s implementation in its three major areas—health workers, health systems,
and communities—in the Region of the Americas.
- Analyze and discuss the most important achievements to date stemming from the follow-up and monitoring of the Initiative Healthy Children: Goal 2002, notably progress towards the goal of reducing by 100,000 the number of deaths of children under five by 2002.
- Put together a set of recommendations and proposals to strengthen the process of implementation and expansion of the IMCI strategy in health services, families and communities.
Recommendations
- Approve the proposed Terms of Reference (Annex II) for the organization and operation of IMCI TAG, adding some changes in
formand rephrasing the third specific objective to emphasize the coordination with other programs that
directly or indirectly contribute to shape children health. Thus, the third specific objective reads as follows:
"Formulate recommendations about the prospects of maintaining and expanding the IMCI strategy taking into consideration
geographic areas, age groups, new factors determining health conditions in children, priority research
lines, and collaboration with other programs".
- Emphasize the importance of converting countries’ political will—demonstrated by the adoption of the strategy—
in concrete supportive actions of resource allocation and equitable resource distribution.
- Strengthen health workers learning and training at all levels by adapting the strategy to the specific conditions in
each country and area while ensuring the quality control requirements established by the IMCI Technical Unit.
- Advocate the IMCI strategy in schools of medicine, nursing, nutrition, public health and other places where health
workers are trained, and, in collaboration with relevant professional associations, promote the incorporation of the
IMCI strategy in their curricula.
- Continue the support for management training for adequate implementation of the strategy, especially through the
promotion of IMCI components aiming at ensuring the steady provision of relevant supplies at all levels, particularly
in local areas.
- That the regional unit of PAHO, on the basis of the experience gained and progress achieved in the implementation
of the strategy, help define in regional countries the criteria and/or requirements and indicators to ascertain
that the strategy has been actually implemented, and promotes their adoption by policymakers at all levels.
- Promote and support health promotion and disease prevention in children actions at regional, national and local
levels.
- Strengthen the component of mass communication and the utilization of all-available means and resources at each
policymaking level in order to disseminate the appropriate information and carry out the strategic recommendations
to improve child health care. These include the utilization of mass media and any other resource to actively
and directly disseminate information to the population.
- Keep regional indicators focused on the monitoring and evaluation of the number of deaths in children under five and
the speed of decline in total mortality due to diseases and health problems covered by the strategy.
- Stimulate and support regional countries in:
10.1 The utilization of indicators of total mortality
and mortality rates for specific causes and factors
pertaining to pathologies prevalent in children
under five.
10.2. The design and utilization of indicators to evaluate
such components of service quality as
access, effectiveness, scientific characteristics
of interventions, efficiency, user satisfaction,
and social participation.
- Foster epidemiological, operational and health services
research on the strategy, adapting the available
protocols to local realities, and promoting its dissemination
in pre-graduate and graduate training, as well
as the adoption of such research results in the
process of planning, programming and monitoring of
activities at all policy and program levels.
- Constitute Technical Advisory Groups similar to IMCI
TAG at the country level with the effective participation
of academic and research institutions, scientific
societies, health services personnel, and cooperating
agencies and organizations. National IMCI TAG could
advise the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation
of the strategy.
- Disseminate widely throughout the region the information
on the contents and progress of the community
component, particularly through IMCI training
courses.
- Further disseminate all aspects of the program
through every scientific mean available, particularly
through scientific journals in the American region and
other regions.
- Foster the joint work between ministries of health and
health schools, and support the creation in the latter
of IMCI training and research centers.
- Accelerate the incorporation of new activities and
sub-components whose design and preparation has
already started, such as neonatal and perinatal components,
oral health, asthma, and chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease, child abuse, child growth and
development among others.
- Publish and widely disseminate successful outcomes
that are being achieved at the regional and country
levels all of which demonstrate country efforts and
advances towards the fulfillment of IMCI objectives in
general, and the initiative Healthy Children: Goal
2002, in particular.
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