Tropical Health Matters

Without quality service delivery data, we can never confidently say what progress we are making in improving access and uptake to malaria services. Mathurin Dodo, Ousmane Badolo, Stanislas Nebie, Youssouf Sawadogo, Thierry Ouedraogo, Moumouni Bonkoungou, Youssouf Zongo, Maria Gouem, Danielle Burke, William Brieger, and Gladys Tetteh of the USAID/Jhpiego Improving Malaria Care Project and Burkina Faso Ministry of Health have implemented procedures to review malaria data quality. They share their findings at the 2018 American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene as well as in the text that follows:

In Burkina Faso, malaria seriously affects pregnant women and children under 5 years of age . The malaria fatality rate for children under 5 was 2.8% in 2010, 2.10% in 2011, and 2.7% in 2012. For pregnant women, it was 0.71% in 2011 and 0.66% in 2013. Since October 2013, the United States Agency for International Development/ President’s Malaria Initiative has funded the 6-year Improving Malaria Care (IMC) project to improve malaria prevention and case management in support of the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). The Ministry of Health and IMC staff conducted two malaria data quality audits (DQAs) in September 2014 and February 2017 that confirmed the poor quality of malaria data. The accuracy of malaria key indicators ranged from 56% to 76%.

A Pre-Data Review Workshop begins the process. IMC supported the NMCP and health management information system to develop a manual of procedures for malaria data review and validation at health district level. IMC assisted in developing a malaria data review sheet based on data validation rules in manual. Each quarter, the district data manager entered data from monthly reports sent by the health facilities in the three health district project areas—Boromo, Dano, and Koupela—into DHIS2.

During the Data Review Workshop the regional data manager asked each health facility manager to verify reports. When correcting each error, the regional data manager and head of the district management team explained to providers the indicator definitions and malaria prevention and treatment guidelines. The district data manager corrected the data in DHIS2.

After three rounds of quarterly reviews, all three health districts saw an overall decrease in the number of reporting errors. After two rounds of quarterly data review workshops, there were no errors due to understanding detected.

Quarterly data review workshops can be used to reinforce the technical capacity of providers. Involving providers who are responsible for malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment gives them a better understanding of indicator definitions and linkages between indicators and the services they provide. Working with health care providers to improve data quality at the district level helps providers build capacity in health management information systems and in data collection, verification, and control at facility level. It also improves the quality of malaria services. The malaria data review contributes to malaria data quality improvement. All opportunities should be used to reinforce the capacity of health care providers and improve the quality of malaria prevention and case management services.

This poster was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under Cooperative Agreement No. AID-624-A-13-00010 and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, PMI or the United States Government.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed