Coordination of health care structures by health zones

The operating standards for health zones in the DRC were designed and enacted on the basis of experiences in rural areas and did not take into account the multiple specificities of urban health zones. This study analyzes the coordination of health care structures by urban health zones in order to provide avenues for improvement. It is a descriptive study using the qualitative approach that was conducted in the provincial city of Kinshasa from October 21, 2017 to March 08, 2018. The results of this study highlighted the various problems encountered by the ECZS in the coordination of health care structures in urban areas such as the ineffectiveness of the regulation of private structures, the non-control of the number of health care structure providers in urban health zones, the ignorance of coordination and the limitation of the latter to supervision and monitoring-evaluation, the ineffectiveness of the coordination instruments, the failure to comply with the stages of the coordination process, etc. Two recommendations were made to the government: develop a new national health policy and allocate 15% of the national budget to health.