100 more hospitals in Bangladesh to adopt Japanese approach

The health directorate plans to further expand Japanese experience for better management in at least 100 hospitals in Bangladesh by this year.

Japan’s development arm, JICA, on Wednesday said Director of Global Networking Office of the Health Sciences at the University of Hokkaido Prof Yujiro Handa was visiting Bangladesh to help make this happen.

He will visit hospitals in Satkhira, Narsingdi and Tangail that have already introduced the system to evaluate their performance and advice the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) how to scale it up.

The Japanese approach for better hospital management involves “continuous improvement” and “total quality management” which they call ‘5S-CQI-TQM’ system.

JICA says it is one of the “main” approaches of the safe motherhood project currently underway.

The project aims at improving the quality of hospital service delivery for cutting maternal and child deaths.

The DGHS introduced the program in 2011 in four hospitals including Satkhira district hospital under a safe motherhood project.

Later, it was expanded to 30 hospitals with JICA and Unicef support.

JICA says Prof Handa will give feedbacks to hospital staff and conduct sessions on the Japanese model in a workshop currently underway.

Japan first introduced ‘total quality management’ model in its manufacturing industries.

It is a management tool for improving performance and quality, and now JICA says more than 15 hospitals in African and Asian countries have adopted this.

Studies on hospitals that have introduced the ‘5S-CQI-TQM’ in Africa and Sri Lanka have shown positive changes towards increasing the quality of services, motivation and job satisfaction of staff, improved cleanliness in hospitals, and positive patient satisfaction.