October 8, 2015
Mongolia
Last August, Caritas CR in cooperation with People in Need organized a medical workshop in Bayan-Ölgii. Local medical staff was informed about the forthcoming manual about mobile health centers in yurts. The participants were divided into five groups and they expressed themselves on every point of the proposed manual. This meeting was another important part of the process of improving health care accessibility in rural areas of Mongolia.
In the second part of the program, the representatives of Somon Health Centers (somon is an administrative unit under the provincial level) discussed openly and thoroughly the proposed manual. They provided a lot of valuable information about the current situation in local health centers and they helped to lay down rules for an effective operating system of mobile consulting rooms. They discussed many important topics, such as the urge for health care, estimated budget distribution, need of cooperation with other social service providers, formulating of standards for healthcare providing as well as administration of contracts with the department of healthcare, health centers and Somon representatives.
According to the World Health Organizationin 2000 Mongolia took the 145th place in the list of 191 countries by death and sickness rate. In the capital city sufficient health services are provided; in rural areas, however, the quality and availability of health care is very poor. That is why Caritas CR and People in Need are currently developing new strategies that should be applicable in every Mongolian province, such as planning instruments, budget drafting or monitoring and procuring of medical material. Both organizations intend to implement these procedures into Mongolian national health strategy.
Their representatives visited the mobile health center in Altantsogts. This center should provide healthcare to all local inhabitants, but it is in a very bad condition and the building, where it used to be located, was completely destroyed earlier on. In the province of Bayan-Ölgii, a similar situation can be seen in four other somons. There is also only one operating health center situated in the yurt. Personal experiences of social workers and the results of the workshop have shown that it is essential to make efforts to introduce effective healthcare services in remote rural regions of Mongolia.
