To commemorate the WHO global initiative “Goals Week: Connect your PMDS to the triple billion goal, 4-8 February 2019”, the Country Office in South Africa conducted a strategic workshop “Goals Week: Aligning WHO South Africa’s work towards GPW-13 priorities” from 7-8 February in Pretoria. The workshop involved all staff to update them on the latest developments regarding GPW-13 and Programme Budget 2020-21 and catalyze strategic deliberations through group work in clusters on means for achievement of priority GPW13 outcomes at the country level and identify individual staff PMDS objectives for 2019 clearly linked to GPW-13 output(s).

The WHO Representative Dr Akpaka Kalu provided strategic direction to the discussion through transparent and open dialogue. He made it clear that UHC would be central to WHO programmes in South Africa and encouraged staff to think beyond specific programmes and contribute to resource mobilization and leadership functions of WHO which are traditionally considered as functions of the WR’s office. Working as team, multiple staff can select a given GPW13 output but still have no duplication of functions. After group work presentation on PMDS objectives and their alignment to GPW13 outputs, the Programme Management Officer presented preliminary analysis of overall contribution of the office to the GPW13 outputs, as planned in the PMDS for 2019.

• A total of 42 staff (including SSA) selected 25 GPW13 outputs in the PMDS
• Outputs 4.3.4 (Safe and secure environment with efficient infrastructure maintenance, cost-effective support services, and responsive supply chain, including duty of care) and 1.1.2 (Countries enabled to strengthen their health systems to deliver on condition- and disease-specific service coverage results) were selected by maximum number of staffs, considering that most staff belong to country support unit or disease control clusters.

WCO staff agreed to share draft PMDS objectives linked with GPW13 outputs with the supervisor for face to face discussion and then submit the final ones in the online portal for formal approval by 28 Feb 2019 and subsequent implementation during the year.

WCO staff agreed to share draft PMDS objectives linked with GPW13 outputs with the supervisor for face to face discussion and then submit the final ones in the online portal for formal approval by 28 Feb 2019 and subsequent implementation during the year.