"The continued collaboration between the Ministry of Health and WHO aims at strengthening the health systems and improve the quality of and access to health care services in Iraq," said WHO representative Dr. Syed Jaffar Hussain who attended the opening ceremony. He further stressed the importance of implementing a muti-year budget process focused on achieving goals of the MOH.
Dr. Isam Namiq Senior Deputy Minister of Health in his discussions expressed his support for the initiative and instructed MoH staff to explore expediting the process according to Government of Iraq rules.
WHO Consultant and facilitator of the workshop Dr. Ekmal Minnallah demonstrated that one objective of the workshop was to encourage the ministries of finance, planning, and health to sit together and develop a strategic plan and budget for the health sector. He further added “the new budget system empowers line departments and government agencies facilitating them to assume control over how they budget, prepare their budget proposals and ensure budgetary allocations are linked to priority programs.
The workshop was concluded with a set of agreed upon recommendations that will serve as the guidelines for the coming implementation steps.