Press release - The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections and Sustainable Democracy to Observe Performance of Health-Centers throughout Albania

Tirana, August 1, 2014 - The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections and Sustainable Democracy (CFFESD) launched its health-centers monitoring project. Project envisions monitoring operational and technical aspects of health centers and their small dependent branches and drawing recommendations for the Ministry of Health how to improve medical services to the Albanian citizens.

"CFFESD is an independent, non-partisan Coalition originally established to promote citizen participation in and observation of the electoral process. However, in mean time we expanded our mission and scope of work with particular aim to utilize elections monitoring tools and methodologies for further democratization of Albanian society and addressing needs of the Albanian citizens" said Mrs. Erjona Mulellari, Executive Director of CFFESD.

"The health system in Albania is mainly public, where the Ministry of Health is the leading actor, and responsible for drafting policies and strategies, regulation of the health system and coordination of all stakeholders inside and outside the health system", said Mrs. Milva Ekonomi, deputy Minister of Health.
The deputy Minister of Health Mrs. Ekonomi, explained that the, "diagnostic and curative health service is organized into three levels: primary service, secondary hospital service and tertiary hospital service. The basic unit is primary service in health centers. Altogether, there are 415 such units contracted with its own budget. The 415 units have their own small dependent branches in the villages with only nursing personnel, which provide basic services such as care for children and pregnant women, vaccination of children, family planning, treatment of emergency medical cases and refer the patients further to the doctor or hospital". .
Methodology CFFESD will apply for health-centers research will not fundamentally differ from the methodology used for elections monitoring (commonly known as Statistically Based Observation – SBO) which is powerful tool that will allow organization to confidently and systematically collect information about health-centers and their small dependent branches functioning.

"During one day of October, 2014, CFFESD will deploy 550 stationary monitors on the representative sample of health-centers and their small dependent branches throughout Albania. Observers will be present at the deployed location for the entire day during the working hours of the health-center and/or satellite and will collect information relevant to the research" said Mirela Arqimandriti, team leader and representative of Gender Alliance for Development Centre, one of the partner organization of CFFESD.

Based on the theory of large numbers and central limit theorem, as fundamentals for sampling, observing health-centers and their branches on random and representative sample will allow CFFESD to extrapolate collected information to all health-centers in Albania. Findings we will present to the public will be accurate with 95% confidence interval within margin of error of up to +/-3.5%.

CFFESD will work closely with the Ministry of Healthcare on the development of the questionnaire and training curriculum for the observers so all important aspects of health-centers functioning are taken into account. All our observers will be specially trained and will be reporting to the Tirana based headquarter throughout the research day (during October 2014).

"One of the obstacles we are facing are full list of satellite health-centers, but we are working with the Ministry of Health to compile such a list using the proper way to have the possibility to elaborate a random representative sample", said Mrs. Mirela Arqimandriti.

CFFESD will inform public before and following the research day with key conclusions and recommendations for improvement of medical services in Albania.

Project is supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Assist Impact.

All relevant information about the progress of the project and outcomes of the research will be available on our:
www.kzln.org.al,
FB page: Koalicioni per Zgjedhje te Lira e te Ndershme
Twitter account: KZLN_CFFE

For any further information, please contact:

Mirela Arqimandriti
Team Leader, The project " Survey on Health Centres in Albania"
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel: 00355682059301

Erjona Mulellari
Executive Director, CFFED
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel: 00355684046777

Address: Rr."Abdyl Frasheri", P.10/1, shk.1, ap.3,
Tirana, Albania