Moving Health Policies to Successful Implementation

It takes good policies that are well implemented to improve several aspects of people¿s lives. Sub-Saharan African Countries and Malawi are hard hit by HIV/AIDS. Human development is hampered by negative effects of HIV infection. If prevention is optimized, the efforts and resources dedicated to treatment of HIV/AIDS could be directed towards improving people¿s social economic development. Execution of HIV prevention and related programs require enabling policies or guidelines. This work provides lessons to move policies into successful implementation. Key barriers include; non-involvement of key personnel in policy making process, lack of awareness about the actual policy, lack of supervision, lack of systems coordination, poor policy harmonization and shortage of manpower to implement policies. Facilitators include; supportive supervision, effective partnerships with key players and good political will. Policy implementation can be improved by; greater involvement in policy-making process for key personnel, training/sensitization about the policies, good coordination among policy players and clear supervision mechanism involving leaders at lower level.