Ensuring vaccines reach the people who need them most
By Celina Kareiva, Communications Associate, BID Initiative
Apr 28, 2017
Posted in Packaging, People, Policies & Practices, Practices, Products
Photo: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Riccardo Gangale. Oliver Mlemeta is a nurse at Usa River Health Facility in Tanzania. Before the BID Initiative, Oliver had limited visibility into the communities she was serving. A suite of data management tools is helping her, and other health workers like her, to improve immunization services.
This post first appeared on the PATH blog.
Stacks of immunization registry ledgers tower above the desks and medical supplies. Each ledger contains rows and rows of patient records—their name, date of birth, the last time they received a vaccine, and which antigen, among other information.
It’s a scene familiar to most health facilities across developing countries—particularly along “the last mile.” The term references the final challenges a country faces as it works to vaccinate its communities, and achieve full immunization coverage. At the root of this challenge are fragmented and weak information systems. Accurate, timely, and accessible data are critical to ensuring the right vaccines are administered to the right people, at the right times.
But by putting the power of data into the hands of health workers, this story is changing.
Towers of paper replaced by tablets
Photo: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/John Healey. Health workers in Arusha, Tanzania, are using tablets to pull up patient records. Workers nimbly navigate a menu of brightly colored icons, and can access the data in real time, which allows them to track trends and execute vaccine programs more effectively.
The Better Immunization Data Initiative, or BID, is working to increase immunization rates by improving data quality and fostering a culture of data use. The five-year initiative, led by PATH, is a country-driven effort in Tanzania and Zambia to roll out a series of tools and interventions, including electronic immunization registries (EIRs), data-use campaigns, and barcodes or QR codes on child health cards.
Graphic: PATH/Shawn Kavon. More than 250 health facilities in Tanzania are using BID data interventions, and more than 81,000 children are entered into the electronic immunization registries (EIRs). Zambia’s Southern Province is already employing data interventions, and in a few months will join Tanzania with its own electronic immunization registry.
Susan Siatwiko is the nurse in charge at Siakapisa Health Facility in the Kazungula district of Zambia. She used to sift through cumbersome ledgers to figure out how many children were due for an upcoming immunization clinic. After tallying up each patient, she’d cross-check that information against Siakapisa’s vaccine stocks. The tedious task didn’t end there. Immunization day was usually followed by several weeks of manual reporting.
Through BID Initiative interventions, she was able to forecast the vaccines needed for an immunization clinic. When she realized her health facility would not have enough stock to meet demand, Susan used a WhatsApp group that BID established as a communication forum for health workers in neighboring facilities to locate more vaccines.
“We borrowed vaccines from a neighboring facility, and completed [our clinic],” says Susan.
Connecting health workers by connecting data
Photo: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Riccardo Gangale. For health workers, immunization information systems such as the EIR, dramatically reduce time filling out paperwork, tracking down patient records, and determining which patients have not shown up for their vaccines. This translates into more personalized care.
BID is also changing the way health workers relate to the information they collect. They know that behind each number is a human life. But now health workers have a better understanding of how data can ease their workload and improve care, motivating them to use the data to make evidence-based decisions.
“[Health workers] are used to collecting data, but there hasn’t been a need for them to critically look at the numbers,” said Dr. Mpoki Ulizubisya, permanent secretary of Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children. “Our desire is to transcribe that information into people and realize that every digit that goes on record is a human.”
An ambitious goal for us all
While clinics around the world leave dusty book ledgers and piles of folders behind, the systems in place in Tanzania and Zambia are upending traditional processes and revolutionizing health care. Pen and notepad are being replaced by tablets and smartphones.
As we near the midpoint of the ambitious global goal to achieve universal coverage by 2020, high-quality data will be critical to vaccinating the last mile. These are the hardest to reach communities who typically have low access to health care, and for whom the financial burden of illness has a greater impact on health and happiness.