The King’s Somaliland Partnership was established in 2000 and works with the Somaliland government, higher education institutions, health facilties, regulators and professional associations, to support health workforce development and service delivery. Our five year strategy aims to:
- Improve the quality of higher education and training for health professions
- Improve the quality of health service delivery and patient centred care, with a focus on emergency care, maternal and newborn health, and mental health
- Contribute to evidence-based policy and practice across the health system through collaborative research, technical advice and training.
Health system challenges
The Ministry of Health Development has made commendable progress in improving health outcomes, particularly in areas of child, maternal and newborn health. Despite these achievements, Somaliland continues to have some of the poorest health indicators in the world. Life expectancy at birth averages 53 years and the country has a long way to go to deliver the health Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Maternal mortality, for example, fell to 396 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020 from 732 in 2016, yet the global SDG targets aim to ensure no country has a maternal mortality ratio of more than 140 per 100,000 live births by 2030.
Donor investment in single-issue programmes, such as malaria, have been prioritised over investments in strengthening the health system as a whole. Major health system challenges include limited financial resources, human resource capacity, fragmented service delivery and poor infrastructure.
The King’s Somaliland Partnership is our longest-running health partnership. Established in 2000, our early work supported the establishment of Edna Adan Hospital, before expanding in 2003 to strengthen the education and training of health professionals at Amoud University and the University of Hargeisa. In 2019 we started working with the Ministry of Health Development (MoHD) to improve the quality of health service delivery, nationally.
Impacts
Since 2000, the King’s Somaliland Partnership has:
- Taught over 838 medical, nursing and midwifery students via online, distance education courses, in subjects such as radiology, neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology
- Introduced an evidence-based approach to assessing medical, nursing and midwifery students that meets international standards, and supported the examination of over 500 students
- Improved the skills and teaching practices of 129 health faculty staff at universities, through courses on teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum development
- Supported the Somaliland Government to develop the country’s first Medical Education Policy, outlining how a skilled health workforce will be produced to meet the country’s health needs
- Facilitated the development of Somaliland’s first national curriculum for teaching medicine at undergraduate level
- Supported the Somaliland Government to conduct a national situational analysis on the quality of health services
- Supported hospital-wide improvements to infection prevention control at Boroma Regional Hospital
- Trained 168 health care workers across 9 hospitals in Primary Trauma Care, with 26 of these trained as trainers to cascade the course