Blog
Toward zero: Strengthening health information systems to eliminate malaria in Malawi and Ghana
This World Malaria Day, we’re marking the date with World Health Organization (WHO)’s theme “Time to deliver zero malaria: invest, innovate, implement.” The international community is focusing on the third “i” – implement – and the importance of reaching marginalized populations with the tools and strategies available today. Read more ›
Collaborating across sectors to prevent rabies in Burkina Faso
After two people died from rabies last year in Sabou, Burkina Faso, regional authorities commissioned a joint investigation into these unusual health events. The investigation was carried out with technical and financial support from the Country Health Information Systems and Data Use (CHISU) program in Burkina Faso. Read more ›
Improving Haiti’s national health data dashboard to support their cholera response
After its first cholera outbreak from 2010 to 2019, Haiti was cholera-free for three years. However, another cholera outbreak began in October 2022—pushing Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) to reclassify cholera from being an “eliminated disease” to one under “active surveillance” in Haiti. [1] Read more ›
Integrating Gender in HIS Strengthening
On March 15, Country Health Information Systems and Data Use (CHISU) hosted their webinar titled, “Integrating Gender in Health Information System Strengthening: Experiences from Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Indonesia.” Dr. Stephanie Watson-Grant, Deputy Director, CHISU, moderated the webinar with panelists: Read more ›
In consultation with the Ghana Health Service Information Communication and Technology Unit of the Policy Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation Division (ICT/PPMED), CHISU engaged the information technology training institute Open Labs to conduct a three-week in-person training on cybersecurity and server administration for national-level ICT staff in January 2023. Read more ›
Gender Integration: Fostering More Equitable Health Information Systems
Integrating a gender perspective is one of the most effective ways to promote gender equity at all levels of a health information system (HIS). Gender integration in HIS aims to ensure that all people, regardless of gender, and those marginalized due to gender-related norms can influence, participate in, and benefit from HIS efforts [1]. Read more ›
Scaling up district malaria data quality improvement interventions in Malawi
Malawi’s National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) has been implementing periodic district mentorship to strengthen data management capacity at the facility level. This intervention improved reporting rates and timeliness of data entry into DHIS2 to 96% and 90% (2022) from 91% and 68.2% in 2018 respectively; however, data accuracy has historically been a challenge in the country, discouraging the NMCP from using data directly from DHIS2. Read more ›
Can Digital Transformation of Health Keep the Pace of Technological Innovation?
Can Digital Transformation of Health Keep the Pace of Technological Innovation? Christina Villella looks back on the 2022 Digital Health Forum and reflects about the state of digital health and future trends and challenges, particularly equity, governance and human resources. Read more ›
Mali: Improved COVID-19 surveillance data quality enables better decision-making
The Ministry of Health and Social Development of Mali has been using the DHIS2 platform for Health Information System data management at all levels since 2016. It has been a priority to improve data reporting and real-time decision-making in the country. Read more ›
Implementing tools and building capacity around data quality review in Niger
CHISU is helping coordinate the implementation of data quality review (DQR) tools in Niger in collaboration with the Ministry of Health Directorate of Statistics. Although the country deployed the DHIS2 data management platform in 2017, quality data collection remained problematic, particularly for the routine Health Information System (HIS). Read more ›