LMG/Côte d’Ivoire: Program Year 3, Quarter 2 PEPFAR Progress Report

The project has been providing capacity building support to the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) and Principal Recipients (PRs) since December 2011. The primary goal of the project is to enable the CCM and PRs to fulfill their critical functions and be effective players in rallying all sectors to combat HIV and AIDS, malaria, and TB. The approved LMG/CI workplan for the period October 2013 through September 2014 has five objectives. Objective 1 aims to ensure that the CCM understands the updated Global Fund directives and is following a plan to ensure compliance with Global Fund regulations. Objective 2 seeks to strengthen oversight and monitoring and evaluation of grant performance by utilizing effective tools. Objective 3 focuses on harmonizing activities with key stakeholders and mobilizing additional resources to carry out basic CCM functions. Objective 4 aims to strengthen the leadership, management, and financial skills of the CCM and PRs, as well as their capacity to implement, monitor, and evaluate programs. Objective 5 seeks to strengthen the leadership, management, and governance skills within selected civil society networks and their capacity to play an advocacy role in the Ivorian health system. During the reporting period of January-March 2014, LMG/CI achieved several results. The project trained 35 CCM members and 18 PR representatives on the Global Fund's new funding model. LMG/CI also conducted after-action reviews with each PR on the Executive Dashboard tool and supported 19 CCM technical committee members to conduct three PR supervisory visits. These visits enabled the committees to assess the effectiveness of the PR's activities in the field, record challenges encountered, propose solutions, and make recommendations to the CCM for better monitoring of activity implementation. In addition to supporting the Global Fund CCM, LMG/CI also provided technical assistance to the Leadership, Management and Governance Decentralization Pilot Project in Côte d'Ivoire (LMG/CIDMP). The LMG/CIDMP project aims to improve health service delivery and health outcomes through health systems strengthening and by creating motivated leaders with strong skills in governance, leadership, and management at the Regional Health Directorates (DR) and the Departmental Health Directorates (DD). During the reporting period, LMG/CIDMP supported both the N'Zi-Iffou and Indénié-Djuablin DRs to successfully conduct their annual review meetings with the participation of local political and traditional authorities, DDs, and financial and technical partners. The project also provided tailored supervision training to 56 members of both the regional and departmental senior health leadership teams in N'Zi-Iffou. The CCM malaria committee faces participation challenges, with only six out of 16 members regularly participating in meetings. Despite these challenges, one CCM malaria committee meeting was held this quarter, in addition to two Dashboard training sessions for committee members. A team of four malaria committee members conducted a five-day site visit during this quarter in the regions of San-Pedro and Soubre. The CCM tuberculosis (TB) committee lacks representation from the private sector and an independent observer, but one CCM TB committee meeting was held this quarter with a total of five participants, and a three-day site visit was conducted by four committee members in the Agnébi-Tiassa-Me Health Region. The CCM HIV committee has a good level of participation at meetings, with adequate representation from all sectors, and two committee meetings were held during the quarter with 15 participants. A nine-day site visit was conducted by three teams (each comprised of three committee members) in Abidjan, Gbeke, Aries, and South Comoé.