Health managers are responsible for managing entire health facilities and coordinating the service delivery processes. The Center was established in 2019 in Bishkek to support their training. Switzerland has allocated more than 7 million soms for the renovation and equipment of the Center, including computers, projectors, and interactive whiteboards.

During his welcoming speech the Minister of Health thanked the Government of Switzerland for more than 20 years of support to the health sector in the form of technical, financial and humanitarian assistance. "We plan that this Resource Centre will work with interested partners to increase professional level of health managers," said Minister Alymkadyr Beishenaliyev.

The health of the population and the quality of health services depend on the knowledge and skills of these managers; “our aim is that ordinary citizens are better served in the health system and this center will make a difference,” said the Swiss Ambassador Olivier Bangerter.

The Center will train health managers according to the needs for effective management they have identified. It will also offer an electronic archive on domestic and foreign best practices in health management and leadership skills.

The Center is created within the Swiss Health Management Strengthening Project, which has been working since August 2020 in cooperation with Euro Health Group (Denmark) and Public Fund “Health System Initiatives” (Kyrgyzstan).

Trainings were conducted by the Health Management Strengthening Project, which is designed and financed by the Government of Switzerland and implemented by Euro Health Group and the Public Foundation “Health System Initiatives”.

The Swiss development Cooperation allocated CHF 2 million for the project to support continuous education and regulation of the health management system in Kyrgyzstan.

The purpose of the training was to prepare health facilities for a timely and coordinated response in case of disease outbreaks. Health managers learned how to use efficiently available financial and human resources while ensuring continuity of provision of medical services for other diseases.

“Thanks to this training we learned a lot. Before we worked by trial and error without any evidence base”, - said Zamira Oruntaeva, Director of Family Medicine Center of Jalal-Abad oblast. “If this training had been done earlier, we could have prevented our staff to be infected with COVID-19”.

The training allowed to discuss challenges faced by health facilities during the first and second waves of COVID-19 and to prepare strategies to improve management of next wave.