Incorporating mental health into primary health care in Uzbekistan
According to the WHO/Europe publication "Highlights on Health" for Uzbekistan (2005), 10 conditions account for 90% of disease burden in Uzbekistan. Cardiovascular diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders account for the highest. The experience of different countries shows that although training of primary care health workers delivers benefits, general practitioners (GPs) also need training in areas of mental health to understand the mind-body connection.
Since 2007 the WHO Country Office in Uzbekistan and the World Bank have successfully collaborated via the Health-2 project in strengthening general practice in the area of mental health. A 4-day training course was developed and successfully conducted in March 2011 for 19 general practice trainers and undergraduate instructors of mental health from medical institutes across the country. The course was aimed at strengthening primary health care capacity with further introduction into continuous medical education of general practitioners and undergraduate curriculum.
The most interesting experience from the course was the achieved benefit of mixing mental health and general practice specialists among both groups - trainers and trainees - and the use of adult learning techniques. This approach allowed open sharing of experiences and better understanding of ways that GPs and mental health specialists can collaborate, as well as the roles and responsibilities of each party.
Despite successful introduction of the training course, the main challenge will be to introduce effective collaboration on different levels to improve the quality of care of patients with mental health conditions in practice. Further efforts from the health care system, including supportive supervision, monitoring and evaluation are required for the country.
“The training course was very useful for me as a mental health specialist in terms of better understanding of importance of GPs and clarifying their roles and responsibilities in management of priority mental health conditions”, said a teacher of mental health from the Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute.
“Discussions and information presented during this course bring me to the clear picture of the importance of mental health problems in the country. I’ve got a lot of new interesting and practical information which will help me in my teaching process to GPs”, said a general practice trainer from Samarkand GP training center.
Since 2007 the WHO Country Office in Uzbekistan and the World Bank have successfully collaborated via the Health-2 project in strengthening general practice in the area of mental health. A 4-day training course was developed and successfully conducted in March 2011 for 19 general practice trainers and undergraduate instructors of mental health from medical institutes across the country. The course was aimed at strengthening primary health care capacity with further introduction into continuous medical education of general practitioners and undergraduate curriculum.
The most interesting experience from the course was the achieved benefit of mixing mental health and general practice specialists among both groups - trainers and trainees - and the use of adult learning techniques. This approach allowed open sharing of experiences and better understanding of ways that GPs and mental health specialists can collaborate, as well as the roles and responsibilities of each party.
Despite successful introduction of the training course, the main challenge will be to introduce effective collaboration on different levels to improve the quality of care of patients with mental health conditions in practice. Further efforts from the health care system, including supportive supervision, monitoring and evaluation are required for the country.
“The training course was very useful for me as a mental health specialist in terms of better understanding of importance of GPs and clarifying their roles and responsibilities in management of priority mental health conditions”, said a teacher of mental health from the Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute.
“Discussions and information presented during this course bring me to the clear picture of the importance of mental health problems in the country. I’ve got a lot of new interesting and practical information which will help me in my teaching process to GPs”, said a general practice trainer from Samarkand GP training center.
