Rodion Kraus
Overview
Dr Rodion Kraus is a director of Health Partners Southern Africa and Health Partners International and has 10 years of extensive experience in health sector reform at senior health management level in the public sector in Southern Africa. He has been facilitating rationalisation of hospital and district health services in a number of provinces in South Africa since 1999, and in Malawi since 2005.
Background and relevant experience
Rodion is currently the Deputy National Programme Manager for the Partnership for Reviving Routine Immunization in Northern Nigeria (PRRINN) and the Maternal Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Programme in Nigeria. Previously, he was the team leader for a four-year Hospital Autonomy Programme for the Ministry of Health in Malawi, funded by USAID. This programme facilitated the introduction of hospital reforms in central hospitals in Malawi through a process of establishing central hospitals as autonomous institutions. It focused on formulating a national policy and legislative and regulatory framework for hospital autonomy, systematic development and documentation of hospital management systems, and improving efficiency of the health system by strategic service planning.
Rodion worked extensively in health planning and hospital management for Mandela’s post-apartheid government in South Africa. He was a senior member of the National Hospital Strategy Project team that developed a strategy for hospital reform in the country in 1995/96. Between 1996 and 1999, he worked as the principal consultant on the rationalisation of hospital and district staff establishments in the Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo and Free State provinces.
He also participated in the UK Department for International Development project team facilitating management and organisational development of academic hospitals, coordinated the decentralisation of a management project for Gauteng and Limpopo provinces, and contributed to the customisation of the hospital information system for Limpopo province.
Rodion has designed and implemented numerous health sector development projects and has been project leader of the Hospital Transformation Project in the Eastern Cape Province, the Service Planning and Human Resource Development Project in Gauteng Province and the District Health Management Framework Project for the Greater Alexandra Area in Johannesburg. He led the Health Partners Southern Africa teams that facilitated the development of the Strategic Position Statements in the Limpopo and Eastern Cape provinces in a consortium with Africon, and led human resource development for Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality in a consortium with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Rodion has consulted in Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Malawi and Namibia on strategic planning and health sector reform.