WHO supports Quality of Care in Maldives’ Health Service delivery

Improving the quality of health services requires strong national direction from governments, focused sub-national support, and action at the health facility level. Moreover, Quality needs to be continually measured and monitored to drive improvement, which relies on accurate, timely and actionable data.

In line with the national priorities and global development goals, the National Heath Master Plan re-affirms ensuring availability of quality assured care, responsive to changing health needs of the population. With WHO’s support, Ministry of Health Maldives is conducting activities linked to the improving quality of care. This includes health facility assessment and training of quality focal points using the Maldives Healthcare Quality Standard (MHQS).

The Maldives Healthcare Quality Standards (MHQS) was developed with WHO’s technical assistance in 2018. Health facilities vary considerably in terms of type of services delivered and expected infrastructure, resources, process for such services. Therefore, the quality standards are developed to measure health facility adherence to standards and measure their overall performance. For each of the set of standards, there are measurable indicators assigned to it which are specific attributes of the standard that is reviewed for compliance. Based on the scoring, guidance will be provided by Quality Assurance and Regulatory Division (QARD), Ministry of Health to the health facility for taking actions for performance improvements.

Health Facilities assessment using the MHQS mobile application is being conducted across six atolls (six health facilities) to measure health facility performance and understand areas requiring improvement. As the Health Facility Regulating Body; Quality Assurance and Regulatory Division of Ministry of Health is conducting external assessment site visits with doctors from public and private hospitals through WHO’s support.

Concurrently, WHO is also supporting the Training of Trainers for MHQS to build capacity of the Quality Focal Points to conduct the internal assessments (at facility level) using MHQS at their respective health facilities and report the findings to Quality Assurance and Regulatory Division of Ministry of Health (QARD). An estimated 40 participants will be trained, which includes all Quality focal points from atoll hospitals and doctors from public and private health settings. The training of trainer’s sessions are being conducted virtually with WHO’s support.



These quality improvement initiatives improve healthcare by identifying problems, implementing interventions, building capacity, and monitoring and maintaining improvements over time, enabling to reduce patient deaths and ICU stays. Moreover, by minimizing hospital readmission rate allows more hospital beds to be available for critical patients. This is crucial in large-scale emergency or medical event, such as the ongoing pandemic to ensure the safety of all patients and staff and to aids in effective use of limited resources to provide emergency medical care that is safe and quality assured. WHO remains committed to provide technical support to Ministry of Health in efforts to ensure high quality in healthcare system.