The need for planning training among public health officers in Cape Verde

Cape Verde is a small island developing state (SIDS). The health sector is guided by strategic and programmatic documents of the Ministry of Health. The objective of this paper is to understand the planning capacity and experience of its Public Health Officers. A questionnaire was applied to 27 Cape Verdean public health officers in order to collect data on participation in health sector planning: 17 were returned and analyzed. This study identifies a youthful, medically trained, but poorly differentiated, public health cadre, without the technical competences to plan the changes needed for the health sector. Planning initiatives were preceded by short technical planning training initiatives, but these did not consolidate a planning culture or contribute to a sustainable capacity to respond to the planning needs of the country. The respondents seemed at a loss to specify planning tools and techniques used in the planning exercises in which they partook. SIDS are considered vulnerable to political interference in the implementation of policy processes but that did not seem to be the case in Cape Verde. Planning was perceived as values driven, strengthening the perception that the values that drive the finality of planning are important determinants of the final plan.