An Enabling Environment for the Effective Performance of Health Unit Management Committees (Humcs) in Health Centres in Busoga Sub-Region
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Date
2020
Authors
Muwanguzi, David Gangu
Otieno, George Ochieng
Kibaara, Kenneth Rucha
Mugisha, John Francis
Muluya, Kharim Mwebaza
Kithuka, Peter
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
direct research publisher
Abstract
Health Unit Management Committees (HUMCs)
were introduced to provide an eye for the community to monitor
and contribute ideas. It was because of poor health service
delivery at some health units owing to realizations that
community had stopped trusting and using services offered by the
government. Health service provision and health sector
performance was thus poor presumably because of dismal
community monitoring. In this study, HUMCs aired out their views
on what they regarded to be an enabling environment for their
work to be performed as effectively as possible. A cross-sectional
descriptive design was adopted with predominantly qualitative
data collection methods. There were 288 respondents from HUMC
that were interviewed. Data were analyzed using a computerbased
qualitative data analysis software atlas Ti 7. This involved
in-depth analysis of each of the main categories of data. The
analysis facilitated teams to be able to describe the range of the
HUMC member’s skills, training and health centre performance.
During analysis, each category was considered for further
assignment into subcategories. Using these subcategories gave
more insight into the details of the mentors’ and trainers’
activities in each category. Findings revealed that an enabling
environment for effective operation of HUMCs should comprise
houses at work places to boost time management and cater for
transport costs. In addition, an enabling environment for the
effective performance of HUMCs should be one where hospitals
are equipped with drugs so as to have more and more people
healed at health centres, and well-regulated information
management systems for easy follow up of activities by HUMCs.
There must also be attempts to train more HUMCs so as to extend
similar services to all health centres. On the side of government,
there has to be an improvement in road networks especially in
hard-to-reach places considering that many HUMCs do not stay at
workplaces. Conclusively, an enabling environment for HUMCs
operation requires the establishment of infrastructure and making
the physical work environment as attractive as possible including
information management systems. It is therefore recommended
that the government continue training HUMCs to increase the
scope of health service delivery coverage, the number of HUMCs
need to be increased at health centres because in some places,
there are just five members yet health centres are very big in
some places. Further, there is the need for the construction of
houses for HUMCs. Budget design ought to include these
requirements in order to boost the speed, effectiveness, and
regular rendering of services by HUMCs.
Description
Research Paper
Keywords
Enabling environment, health unit management committees, health centres
Citation
Ochieng, O. G., Kithuka, P., Muwanguzi, D. G., Muluya, K. M., Mugisha, J. F., & Kibaara, K. R. (2020). An Enabling Environment for the Effective Performance of Health Unit Management Committees (HUMCs) in Health Centres in Busoga Sub-region.