In Bennett's article "Health Revolution in Africa?" he notes that:

It is often said that health is too important to be left to the Ministry of Health and this, in fact, is true. Without the expertise and resources of the Ministries of Agriculture, Education, Local Government, Water Resources, Information etc. health for all can never be achieved by the Year 2000. Coordination as implicit in the PHC strategy is, however, seldom achieved between sectors at their managerial level.

In Zaire, a National Committee for "Well-Being" was established to promote inter-ministerial collaboration in promoting Health For All. However, to my knowledge, between 1982-1992, the committee never met, let alone provide any lip-service to intersectoral coordination.

At the same time, however, considerable intersectoral coordination was achieved at the national level with respect to water and sanitation. At least four ministries in Zaire claim some responsibility for water/sanitation, including the ministries of Health, Rural Development, Mines & Energy, and Environment. Frequent governmental transfer of responsibility for water quality between ministries resulted for example in both the Ministries of Health and Environment claiming responsibility for water control and rural sanitation agents, and with neither one actually doing much about it.

By recognizing the particular interest areas and comparative advantages of each ministry, it was noted that most discussions revolved around who would be responsible for the more technically complex systems. Since the national PHC strategy was to promote principally simple water/sanitation systems (spring capping, VIP latrines and village sanitation programs), is was possible to negotiate a division of responsibilities between ministries based on the variables of urban/rural and complex/simple as shown in the table below:

This high level intersectoral coordination worked well because it provided the Ministry of Health with the mandate to use simple water and sanitation interventions as an entry point in developing primary health care, without making it dependent on the pace of development within the other ministries.