Office-specific evaluations

The Transformation Agenda of the World Health Organization Secretariat in the African Region 2015-2020 was launched by the Regional Director for Africa in February 2015. Its objective is to ensure that the WHO Secretariat in the African Region evolves into the primary leader in health development in Africa and is a reliable and effective protector of Africa’s health stock. The purpose of this mid-term evaluation was to: review progress in the implementation of the Transformation Agenda; document achievements and best practices; identify challenges and areas for improvement; and provide recommendations on the way forward.

The overall objective of this evaluation was to determine the contribution of WHO, in coordination with other agencies, to the success of the NIP/EPI in Bangladesh, and to evaluate the necessity of, and options for, the continuation of current WHO support.

The purpose of this decentralized evaluation was to evaluate the contribution of WHO to the improvement of maternal health in the South-East Asia Region from 2010 to 2015. It reviewed progress in five countries at different stages of development, namely Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The evaluation had the following objectives:

1. understand the scope and diversity in maternal health responses by WHO;
2. study the contribution of WHO to the policies, projects and practices in maternal health;
3. ascertain strategies that yield good uptake by governments and local partners; and
4. identify learning that can be applied to strengthen WHO’s programme in the Region.

A final evaluation of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control was carried out with the following objectives:

1. to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the Programme;
2. to analyse the Programme’s wider impact and application of lessons learnt;
3. to identify best practice and lessons learnt; and
4. to make available to all its stakeholders appropriate and relevant data, conclusions and recommendations in order to provide a basis for the next project and/or programme focusing on neglected tropical diseases as there has been a fundamental change in approach from control to elimination of onchocerciasis.

These two external evaluations were commissioned by the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific as part of a series of assessments to gather evidence on its initiatives in the context of the WHO reform since 2009, which included building on a culture of evaluation. The first evaluation analysed the delivery of WHO’s work in the Pacific, as the sub-region’s 21 island States and areas are scattered over the world’s largest ocean, thus requiring a unique response. The second evaluation was done in response to a specific recommendation in a 2012 review to "assess whether the Regional Office is really country-focused".