Palestinian Prime Minister: We are working on institutional governance in the health sector to provide the best services to citizens

SadaNews - Palestinian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mustafa confirmed that the government's efforts are directed towards providing the best services to citizens through sound institutional governance, leading to financial sustainability. He stated: "While we strive to provide better-quality health services to citizens, we are working on institutional governance, which is a national duty, to achieve financial sustainability in light of limited resources and the challenges and difficult circumstances we face."

The Prime Minister added: "Optimal management of available resources is of utmost importance, and our financial capabilities are limited. The size of the health sector budget in the Palestinian budget is relatively large, indicating our interest in this sector and our desire to provide this vital service to citizens with better quality."

This statement came during his speech at the launch workshop for the health governance and patient safety strategies for the Ministry of Health, on Wednesday at the ministry's headquarters in Ramallah, in the presence of Health Minister Dr. Majid Abu Ramadan, several ministers, officials, international partners, and Ministry of Health staff.

Mustafa praised the efforts of the Ministry of Health, which has made significant strides in a series of measures related to digital transformation and medical referral systems, which are estimated to cost about one billion shekels annually and constitute a third of the Ministry of Health's budget. The aim is to rationalize expenditures by localizing health services, enhancing the quality of services provided, increasing capacities, and engaging the local sector from another perspective.

For his part, Health Minister Abu Ramadan stated: "The launch of the governance and quality strategies comes in the context of the comprehensive functional review of the Ministry of Health, which reaffirmed the two central roles of the ministry as guaranteed by the Palestinian Public Health Law of 2004. These are providing health services as the primary provider and regulating the health sector as the leading regulatory authority. These strategies and the resultant action plans are among the most important outputs of the functional review process, enhancing the institutionalization of the health system and raising its preparedness and effectiveness at various levels."

Abu Ramadan added: "These strategies address core issues that form the essence of health system development, the most prominent of which are improving the quality of health services and enhancing patient safety practices, localizing health services to reduce the need for referrals abroad, strengthening partnership and coordination between the public and private sectors, developing cooperation with international organizations, funding entities, and civil society to support health system priorities, enhancing digital transformation to enable data-driven decision-making, and building human resource capacities as the foundation for providing high-quality health services."

The Health Minister continued: "We cannot talk about governance and quality without addressing the disastrous health situation in the Gaza Strip, where our health crews are facing one of the harshest humanitarian and medical crises in modern times. Despite the widespread destruction of health infrastructure and the scarcity of supplies, the government is continuing, under direct directives from the Prime Minister and with the diligent efforts of the Ministry of Health staff, to do everything it can to ensure the entry of medicines, consumables, and surgical supplies and to enhance the operational capacity of the few centers that are still functioning."