Consultative Workshop with Pokhara Metropolitan City Officials

HERD International and Pokhara Metropolitan City jointly organized a workshop as part of the preparation to implement field activities of ongoing study under the CHORUS project in Pokhara Metropolitan city. The workshop held on 28 March was chaired by Mr. Hemanta Paudel, chief of the Health Division of the Metropolitan City. CHORUS (Community-led Responsive and Effective Urban Health System) is a Research Project Consortium that involves multiple partners from different countries and HERD International, one of the members in the consortium, is currently conducting a study on the local health system in Pokhara metropolitan city focusing on urban poor and Non-Communicable Disease (NCDs).

The workshop was attended by key officials at Metropolitan Health Division and the research team from HERD International. The workshop discussed the health facility assessment tool for final amendment, determined possible wards to be covered by the study and mapped key stakeholders in the Metropolitan city.

HERD International team introduced the project including objectives, scope, implementation modality and roles and responsibilities of both the partners. Following the presentation from the HERD team, Mr. Paudel, chief of the Health Division suggested ensuring the infection prevention component, focusing on tertiary hospitals for service availability and gathering information on human resource absence and presence during the survey.

The workshop identified wards number 8, 9, 14 and 15 of the metropolitan city as a possible area for the qualitative study in the community and agreed that two wards out of these will be selected. The priority was determined based on the presence of urban slum and urban poor households, diversity in slum areas, distance from private health providers and prevalence of NCDs among others. However, community locations will be decided after consultation with the ward-level stakeholders. Following approval from Municipal Project Advisory Committee’s decision, field activities have started in the study site.