IHI's work on these projects is now completed.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s South African (SA) country program was started in 2005. The IHI Africa Region team has worked closely with a growing group of local partners and the Department of Health in South Africa to support the national health system efforts to save South African lives and improve the patient experience of care. The IHI-South Africa program is a strong group of linked projects seeking results across a large and diverse country.
Project Design
The IHI Africa Region team has nurtured several strategic partnerships with organizations that have emerged as fore-runners of the health systems improvement movement in South Africa. These “Centers” of QI support for the health system have become the pillars of partnership around which the IHI-SA’s plans revolve. With each of these organizations, IHI provides support for design and execution of specific health systems improvement projects, strategic advising for program leadership, capacity building for quality improvement, and expertise in analysis and dissemination of results.
20,000+ Partnership [IHI's work in this program is now completed]
20,000+ is a partnership between the KwaZulu Natal (KZN) Department of Health, the University of KZN, and IHI which aims to decrease perinatal transmission of HIV to less than 5% by 2011 and has already shown a decrease of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) rates to below 3%. The project has expanded from 3 initial Districts to all 11 Districts in KZN Province and has launched an effort to improve infant and young child feeding. The project is now supporting the National Department of Health in its drive to eliminate mother-to-child transmission by 2016. We have also started the Nompilo research project aimed at examining the impact of interventions to improve childhood survival through community health workers enabled to use QI.
The Aurum Institute (Aurum) is a PEPFAR-funded South African, not-for-profit organization which has been working for more than a decade to support the Department of Health (DOH) to strengthen HIV and TB prevention, care, and treatment services in Gauteng, Limpopo, and North West Provinces. IHI’s partnership with Aurum aims to improve the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), pediatric and perinatal TB and HIV care in Ekurhuleni North (EKN) sub-district in Gauteng Province and Greater Tubatse and Ephraim Mogale sub-districts in Limpopo Province. In addition, we seek to build QI capabilities both within the Aurum team and with their DOH counterparts. Mother-to-child HIV transmission rates are already below 5% in EKN and the aim is to further reduce the MTCT rate to 2% within 7 months, and to improve postpartum HIV/TB follow-up and linkage to care for mother and infant.
The “Best Care…Always!” (BCA) campaign is an initiative aimed at supporting SA hospitals in implementing evidence-based interventions to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and to ensure the judicious use of antibiotics. Patterned after IHI’s 100,000 Lives Campaign, the Canadian Safer Healthcare Now initiative, and WHO’s World Alliance for Patient Safety, BCA was launched in August 2009 to support SA’s private hospitals, and spread in May 2010 to include public sector hospitals. BCA seeks to enhance patient safety and improve quality in hospital care through partnership with major public and private health care providers, funders, and professional societies. Thus far, 202 private and public hospitals are enrolled in BCA, each implementing at least one infection prevention and control bundle. BCA works in the public health sector in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
