USAID and the MOH collaborated to improve health workforce management in Timor-Leste, focusing on job descriptions and evaluations. Moving forward, in-person training and institutionalization are recommended for sustainable implementation, aiming to enhance health care services and employee development.

With increased migration around the world posing unique challenges and opportunities for health systems, efforts to better integrate and include migrants and host communities in national health systems are an integral part of the global health equity agenda. 

Civil society organizations in Timor-Leste are playing important roles to identify health system problems and solutions, contribute ideas to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) annual action plan, and participate in monitoring that holds the government accountable.

Returning funds to the Ministry of Finance at the end of the fiscal year is the last thing any Ministry of Health wants to do. In Peru, health budget officials are rolling out a strategy to stop that from happening.

​​​For countries wanting to strengthen health budget execution, learning about promising approaches used by others is one thing but putting them into practice is another. This blog reveals how two countries, Lao PDR and Peru, adapted promising practices and began to implement them.

Excerpts from an interview with Mr. Marcelo Amaral, Director General of Corporate Service at the Ministry of Health in Timor-Leste.

This brief shares insights from LHSS’s review of Timor-Leste’s thriving landscape of civil society organizations (CSOs), with a focus on those that are active in the health sector.

Late last year, health sector practitioners from eight countries met to tackle the issue head-on as participants in the Joint Learning Network Health Budget Execution Learning Exchange. They made meaningful progress.

For countries facing a large influx of migrants, the best way to ensure that these new members of society have sustained access to essential health services is to have a long-term strategy – one that builds on existing health platforms.

In the Dominican Republic, the dual impact of large numbers of migrants and a health system overwhelmed by COVID-19 has meant that fewer health services are available for migrant women. LHSS is working to improve health protection for the country’s migrant women, most of whom come from Haiti.

Poor budget execution results in inefficiencies that undermine the ability of health agencies to improve access to needed health services and improve population health. Yet billions of dollars in unexecuted health budgets are returned to treasuries every year. 

Population movement of this magnitude places huge stress on health systems in receptor countries. How can health care for migrants be financed? How can health system capacity be expanded? And how can health sector policies and national migration policies be harmonized?