English
El Taguri A 1, Elkhammas EA 2, Bakoush O 3, Ashammakhi N 4, Baccoush M 1, Betilmal I 5
(1) Department of Family and Community Medicine, Al Fateh University, Tripoli, Libya. (2) Department of Surgery, Division of Transplantation, The Ohio State University, USA. (3) Department of Nephrology, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden (4) Institute of Science & Technology in Medicine, School of Medicine, Keele University, UK. (5) World Health Organization, Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean.
Libyan J Med AOP:080301
Abstract
In the last four decades, there has been a substantial horizontal expansion of health services in Libya. This resulted in improvement in morbidity and mortality, in particularly those related to infectious disease. However, measures such as the national performance gap indicator reveal an underperforming health system. In this article, we discuss aspects related to the Libyan health system and its current status including areas of weakness. Overcoming current failures and further improvement are unlikely to occur spontaneously without proper planning. Defining community health problems, identifying unmet needs, surveying resources to meet them, establishing SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic and time specific) objectives, and projecting administrative action to accomplish the proposed programs, are a must. The health system should rely on newer approaches such as management-by-objectives and risk-management rather than the prevailing crisis-management attitude.
Keywords: Libya; Health Services; Health crisis; Health reform; Management-Quality
Link/DOI: http://www.ljm.org.ly/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1318