Category: Policies & Practices
Dec 11, 2018
In early September, PATH staff from Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), joined representatives from National Expanded Programs for Immunization (EPI), civil society representatives, and other government stakeholders for an enriching data learning trip in Tanzania. Facilitated by PATH, the learning trip was hosted by the Government of Tanzania through the Arusha Region, Ministry of Health staff, and PATH’s BID Initiative, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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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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Nov 14, 2018
Five years. Two electronic immunization registries (EIRs). Nineteen design countries who regularly input to the BID Learning Network. Study visits to Benin and Chile to learn from others implementing health information systems. More than half a million children registered in both EIRs, and 1,580 health facilities implementing data quality and use interventions, allowing health workers to collect, analyze, and act upon immunization data in real time.
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Oct 25, 2018
In the harsh, dry highland plains of the Ngorongoro region of Tanzania stands a small red tent – a tiny speck of colour in an otherwise dusty, lifeless landscape. It can be seen from several kilometres away, and that is precisely the point. Because even before Bakari Shemagembe, the local Assistant Medical Officer, and his team have finished setting up around the tent, the local Maasai tribespeople start to arrive, trickling in from all directions, drawn towards this beacon.
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Oct 3, 2018
Organizing an international five-day meeting for a diverse digital health community is no easy task. There are venues to secure, agendas to develop, and invitation letters to draft. Yet the leaders and innovators of the OpenHIE community were driven to ensure that we all had a place where we could gather to get to know and learn from each other about health information exchange.
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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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Jul 11, 2018
Growth and progress are rarely linear. They zig and zag, and at times, for every step forward, there are two steps back. Buoyed by platforms like the BID Learning Network (BLN) and User Advisory Groups, the BID Initiative has embraced adaptive management and iterative, flexible program design that, over the last five years, have translated into many proud wins, some setbacks, and in turn, many lessons learned. In the hopes of sharing these we’ve compiled a comprehensive encyclopedia that documents our learnings throughout every stage of BID’s journey, from the design and testing of data quality and use interventions, on through implementation.
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Jul 2, 2018
Evidence suggests that electronic immunization registries (EIRs) are cost effective tools that help increase coverage, improve the timeliness of vaccination, provide reliable data for decision-making, and reduce revaccination by helping to verify and track previous immunizations. Developing an EIR, implementing it at the country level, and, above all, ensuring its sustainability are not easy, fast, or inexpensive processes. However, the experience generated by multiple EIR development projects, and the success of some of those programs, can be used as sources of best practices and provide lessons learned. Within this context, Electronic Immunization Registry: Practical Considerations for Planning, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation was developed and published by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 2017.
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Jun 26, 2018
Remain committed to openness. Coordinate with other key initiatives and organizations. Contribute to the body of knowledge that informs future investment. These are just a few of BID’s founding principles, which were manifest last month during a stakeholder meeting in Laos. On May 3, members of PATH’s ImmReg team and the BID Initiative joined a meeting convened by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and National Immunization Program (NIP) of Laos. It brought together key partners working with the government to share, understand, and prioritize the needs of NIP and the MOH regarding the immunization information system. The ImmReg and BID teams shared their lessons learned, challenges and successes with implementing and scaling electronic immunization registries, so that stakeholders and members of government in Laos, who face similar data challenges, could learn from their experiences.
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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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