The Benjamin William Mkapa Foundation (BMF) Established in April 2006 as a Trust and non-profit organization, draws its bold energy from the visionary leadership of its Founder, the Former President of United Republic of Tanzania, His Excellency Benjamin William Mkapa.

BMF will continuously work with
partners to support initiatives that
aim at saving lives—especially to
cut down maternal and newborn
mortality in the most needy areas
of the country, as guided by the
National Health Sector Strategic Plan
IV, as well as in the National One Plan
II to Improve Reproductive, Maternal,
Newborn, Child & Adolescent
Health in Tanzania (2016 – 2020).

The Benjamin William Mkapa Foundation (BMF) Established in April 2006 as a Trust and non-profit organization, draws its bold energy from the visionary leadership of its Founder, the Former President of United Republic of Tanzania, His Excellency Benjamin William Mkapa.

For the period ending June 2019, BMF implemented eleven multi-funded Projects / Initiatives with support from development partners and corporates. These programs have continued to contribute to the country’s achievements in the Health Sector, particularly on decreasing the existing gap for Human Resource for Health and achieving the three 90s targets of HIV/ AIDS, combating Tuberculosis and saving lives of women and children.

Stakeholder such as BMF to contribute Government efforts to address various programmatic challenges as stipulated in the Health Sector HIV Strategic Plan (HSHSP IV) Draft, NMSF IV, One Plan II though various funding envelops – ATF, PEPFAR, Global Fund etc.

For the past three years of implementing the programmes, the Mkapa Foundation has registered key achievements and lessons learnt related to Human Resource for Health policies, practices and systems that emanated from the facility, district, regional and central level. This brief is a consolidation of lessons learnt from the Mkapa Foundation-led programmes in relation to the current Public practices in the areas of recruitment; motivation and retention; leadership and management and health service delivery.

More than 760 health workers have their clinical skills improved on managing HIV and AIDS
clients including preventing HIV transmission to the child from a pregnant mother.

CCHPs are the council annual health and social welfare plans which collate plans to address policy and guideline objectives, burden of diseases nationally and locally, and all sources of health funds to implement the planned targets. In developing CCHPs, councils include the number of staff required and available, and amount of funds required to implement the annual CCHPs at all levels. In fact, successful implementation of CCHPs is dependent to a large extent on availability of staff and funds.

The Mkapa Fellows Programme (MFP) its noble programme, is a five years (2013-2017) initiative, aiming to contribute to the improved health systems for addressing HIV/AIDS , Maternal health and new born health challenges in 15 districts of Tanzania through Human Resources for Health, infrastructure development and capacity building in rural areas.

A recent review of orientation processes and practices for health workers in the districts, which was carried out by IntraHealth International and Benjamin William Mkapa HIV/AIDS Foundation between January and May 2010 suggests inadequate staff orientation as one of the contributory factors to staffing problems. In response to this gap, an orientation package is designed to improve orientation practices for health workers.