The World Bank contracted the SAMRC Unit and the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Pretoria to conduct training for doctors and midwives in the Lesotho hospitals in order to improve the health outcomes. A programme was developed according to World Bank specifications, namely the Lesotho Action Programme (LEAP) for Quality.

The first task at hand was to change the checklist that was used to measure the performance of the Lesotho hospitals that participated in the Performance Based Financing (PBF) programme. Based on that, a master training was conducted with a focus on maternal and neonatal health (70%) and the rest was devoted to common causes of death such as prematurity, childhood infections, HIV/TB and trauma. A week-long master training was done for 65 health care workers of district hospitals in March 2018. All eight hospitals in the PBF programme will conduct weekly training and do fire drills. Based on their performance in maternal, neonatal, HIV/TB and emergency skills they will be financially rewarded by the World Bank.

In a twelve-month period, intensive training will be done of health care providers with material that is specifically developed for this purpose. A large teaching portfolio has been developed with case scenarios, vignettes, guidelines, video's and PowerPoint presentations on a diversity of topics. This material is available for CLCs and registrar training (click here to follow the link on the Family Medicine website).