 The Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs recently signed a service level agreement with the Sinjoud Hospital Laboratory with the aim of ensuring that high-quality and accessible diagnostic services are provided to diabetic and hypertensive patients under the performance-based financing PBF pilot program. The service level agreement between the two parties will establish a mutual understanding of the lab services to be provided. Under the PBF pilot program, the Ministry of Health will subsidize the provision of lab services in an effort to ensure that individuals with type 2 diabetes and hypertension can receive the service free of charge. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Jenny Danielle, says this signing of the service level agreement represents the commitment of the government towards a health sector reform. This step towards allowing Sinjoud Hospital to provide us with support laboratory services will allow us to provide the patients with as much care as possible in a manner that is affordable to them, accessible. Persons will not need to go to find private labs in order to get their labs done in those areas that have been selected for implementation of the PBF. We look forward today with much anticipation that the project will run in a very smooth way and the persons who deserve the health care that we are going to be providing will have access to it. PBF program coordinator Neyam Jabatis with the greatest pleasure celebrated the momentous occasion of the signing of the service level agreement with the Sinjoud Hospital lab which signifies a step in the direction of implementing PBF. See we continue to work together we will make this miracle true and it will not only be for our own benefit it will be for the benefit of the clients who we are going to serve because as simple as this is this contributes to one of the biggest goals of universal health care and that is to reduce or prevent or eliminate out-of-pocket spending to clients. Chief Executive Officer of the Sinjoud Hospital Lydia Adkins thank the Ministry of Health for this opportunity to strengthen such a critical relationship between the hospital and primary health care in the management of diabetic and hypertensive patients. The service level agreement allows us to tick some boxes along our tick some boxes related to the dimensions of quality in health care in terms of equity and looking at proxy measures such as accessibility and affordability of services allowing for a Sinjoud hospital to be able to go into community and bring those services where individuals require and need it most at the primary health care facility and allowing us to be able to adhere to one of the key tenets of universal health coverage which is providing persons the services when and where it is that they need it. The PBF pilot program will be launched in eight wellness centers in phase one with the Sinjoud Hospital Lab providing lab services to clients at these participating facilities. The Ezra Long Lab of the OKEU Hospital will also be coming on board and will be signing a service level agreement soon. Reporting from the project implementation unit within the Ministry of Health Wellness and Elderly Affairs I am Funa Neptune.