Morocco

PROGRESS
Projet de Gestion Regional des Services de Sante
(Project for Regional Management of Health Services)

Health services in Morocco are at a critical juncture in their development as it faces both difficult challenges and exciting opportunities. Much of the country's urban population has reasonably good access to primary healthcare services, resulting in impressive improvements in health indicators for that segment of the population. However, the rural population has much less access to healthcare services, which is seen in poorer health indicators. Maternal mortality rates, for instance, are 125 deaths per 100,000 births in urban areas and 307 per 100,000 in rural areas. In addition, Ministry of Health (MOH) programs are managed by progressive, well-trained professionals, but there is less capability at the regional, provincial, and local levels of the health care system, making both management and service delivery improvements more challenging.

The objective of TASC/JSI's PROGRESS Project is to support the implementation of decentralized primary, reproductive, and child health services in the Souss-Massa-Draa (SMD) and Tangier-Tetouan (TT) regions. In these regions, infant mortality rates (45 and 43 deaths per 1000 births for SMD and TT, respectively) are higher than the national average (36.6 deaths per 1000 births). Specific focus areas include maternal health and emergency obstetric and neonatal care, child health and Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses, family planning and sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS. JSI's major technical contributions, with subcontractor University Research, Co., are to build the means to decentralize and deconcentrate the health sector, to improve regional planning and evaluation capabilities, to provide in-service (clinical) training and quality assurance, to foster partnership, and to encourage community participation.