Palestinian National Health Strategy 2011 - 2013.

This National Health Strategy is a sectoral document aiming at individuating priority areas that will lead to a development of the Ministry of Health, providing good governance and leadership in overseeing and regulating the Palestinian health sector, within the framework of internationally agreed criteria. These priority areas focus on (i) state building; (ii) better governance; (iii) health promotion; (iv) accessible, high-quality and safe service delivery; and (v) sustainability through appropriate health financing mechanisms and competent human resources. In the Annexes, the Strategy provides the policy framework for the development and implementation of priorities.
The overall goal of the Strategy is State building and health system and services strengthening to realize an effectively health service that facilitates implementation and the achievement of planned results in Palestine.
To achieving the above goal, eight strategic objectives have been set out, namely (i) strengthen the governance and institutional development of the Ministry of Health; (ii) strengthen human resources and financing of human resources in the health sector, (iii) promote healthy behaviors and improve disease prevention; (iv) assure the rights of all citizens to access quality sustainable primary, secondary and tertiary health services; (v) ensure sustainable health financing mechanisms and effective, efficient and transparent financial management; (vi) strengthen aid effectiveness through reaching a joint consensus on how best to implement the Paris (The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness) and Accra (The Accra Agenda for Action) principles; (vii) maintain and strengthen public-private partnerships especially between MoH, UNRWA, NGO’s and the private-for-profit sector to facilitate harmonization, coordination, and comprehensiveness of efforts; and (viii) develop the role of the Ministry of Health in cross-sectoral work with other ministries and national institutions to assure the strengthening of the health component in national plans such as education, environment, labor and emergency and disaster planning and management.
To eliminate hunger and malnutrition, the Strategy aims at eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by halving, within 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. The document envisages also the necessity of assuring primary health care for the poor, vulnerable, and unemployed, as well as those displaced and/or living in hard to reach areas.
As for the Governance, the Strategy highlights the need for good governance and for state building in the health sector, which means setting and achieving clear goals such as ensuring equity in access to services, quality of services, and patients’ rights. Governance is also concerned with (i) ensuring that health services and public health are responsive to people’s needs; and (ii) transparency and accountability, citizens and civil society should have the right to scrutinize the work of the Ministry and hold it accountable for achieving national health objectives and planned results.