Category: Monitoring & Evaluation
Nov 29, 2018
Beatrice Owawa is a Reproductive and Child Health nurse at the Usa River Health Center in Tanzania, one of more than 1,500 health facilities implementing data quality and use interventions across Tanzania and Zambia in partnership with the BID Initiative. As she toggles between dashboards on her tablet, you would never know it, but Beatrice used to depend on pen and paper for documenting her facility’s immunization clinics.
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Aug 24, 2018
Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new immunization data from 2017 that reveals global progress toward immunization targets, and where countries and stakeholders are still falling short. Nine in 10 infants were vaccinated last year, or 123 million babies worldwide. But since 2015, the percentage of children around the world who have received the full three-dose course of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3), has leveled out at 85 percent. DTP3 is a key indicator of immunization program performance.
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Aug 9, 2018
The electronic immunization registries (EIRs) introduced under the BID Initiative in Tanzania and Zambia have now been scaled to 1,571 health facilities (1,273 in Tanzania; 298 in Zambia). Every day health workers are registering new children into the EIRs and capturing their birth date, their caregiver’s contact information, and the dates they received their last vaccine. More than 467,105 children have been registered into the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) and more than 96,383 children have been registered into the Zambia Electronic Immunization Registry (ZEIR). That’s a lot of data that was previously unavailable above the facility level. But what can we learn from this new information?
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May 23, 2018
Earlier this month, PATH and the BID Initiative participated in the “Teach to Reach: Innovative Methods for Immunization Training” workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from May 1-3. This three-day hands-on forum provided participants with an opportunity to use a design-thinking approach to tackle issues related to workforce performance within immunization programs. Approximately 100 participants from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, and other global partners attended the workshop. BID participated in a number of sessions, including a well-received demonstration of the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) during the opening night of the workshop.
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Mar 16, 2018
Beatrice Owawa’s fingers dance across the screen of her tablet. She nimbly jumps from one window to the next, as she checks vaccine records and stock levels in the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) at Usa River Health Center in Arusha, where she works as a medical attendant. When Beatrice pulls up a list of young patients who have recently missed their vaccines, she takes down their names and contact information and begins to call their caregivers. It may seem unremarkable, but the task of identifying patients who have fallen through the cracks used to be nearly impossible. Before TImR, Beatrice relied on paper registries to track “defaulters,” or patients who had missed a life-saving vaccine.
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Aug 30, 2016
How much does it cost to implement BID interventions in the test sites in Tanzania and Zambia? What are the capital and recurrent costs of operating BID interventions? What are the resources required to implement interventions in each district? How do the costs of providing immunization services and reporting compare for the current system and after BID interventions are implemented? What are the benefits of the BID interventions that can be quantified in monetary terms? These are some of the key questions policy makers and donors are asking the BID team as we move forward with implementing interventions in facilities in Tanzania and Zambia.
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Aug 23, 2016
Optimizing immunisation coverage in Zambia is an important goal, achievable with Ministry of Health leadership and close collaboration among partners. Implementation of appropriate technology could help to increase coverage, but new technology is not a solution in itself. The skill and engagement of users are critical elements for the success of any innovation.
Read MoreDec 2, 2014
I recently stopped in Geneva on my way home from visiting the BID Initiative teams in Tanzania and Zambia to meet with important stakeholders at Gavi. While the BID Initiative work primarily focuses on activities in Sub-Saharan Africa with the BID Learning Network (BLN) and in our demonstration countries; , we are also building partnerships with global and bi-lateral agencies like Gavi, WHO, UNICEF, USAID, and others.
Read MoreSep 25, 2014
Two primary outcomes for the BID Initiative include improving immunization data quality and utilization in demonstration countries, the first being Tanzania. To do this effectively we must establish a starting benchmark to monitor changes over time and a baseline survey is the perfect way of doing so.
Read MoreAug 6, 2014
One of the first things you may have learned about the BID Initiative is our belief that better data, plus better decisions, will lead to better health outcomes. We’re investing in this premise by introducing interventions related to information system products and the practices of people who use them. But how will we know that these BID interventions are being implemented as intended? And how will we know if there are associated improvements in data quality and increased data use for decision-making?
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