In the previous post, Nick shared the exciting news that data from health centers in Mozambique is now available for us to see. Living in an environment where information is easily available at our fingertips, we often take the availability of data like this for granted. In reality, obtaining data from a place where information systems and health records aren’t commonly used is quite challenging!
Yet, the information is crucial not only because it can strengthen the overall performance of the health system by enabling data-driven decision making by our partners on the ground, it is necessary in order to measure progress and impact. And as I’ve written previously, VillageReach is committed to monitoring and evaluating the progress and impact of the Dedicated Logistics System in Mozambique.
The key questions to ask when attempting to evaluate impact are whether or not the Dedicated Logistics System has met its objectives to improve health system performance and increase immunization coverage. In the baseline evaluation, we attempt to answer questions such as: how many children are immunized and how often do health centers run out of vaccines. Unfortunately, this type of information is just not available. There are no immunization registries to search. Health centers don’t keep patient records. Even if they did, we still wouldn’t be able to know how many children are not immunized because there are no vital record systems either. These things just aren’t tracked.
In order to get the information we believe is valuable to answer these questions, we went out and collected it. In order to estimate the immunization coverage, we conducted more than 800 household surveys in randomly selected villages across the two provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa. The sample size gives us enough statistical power to make an estimate of the true immunization coverage rate with 95% confidence and because the villages were randomly selected, the sample is representative of the population. In each household, we essentially asked whether or not the children living there had received certain vaccines. In addition, we conducted surveys in more than 60 health centers in those villages to get an idea of how the health centers were performing. We worked with a group in Mozambique who hired and trained local staff to conduct the surveys and complete the data entry. The process took about nine months from the time we first sought Ministry of Health approval for the study until we started seeing the data.
Despite a few challenges along the way including delays in schedules with field teams, traveling time to remote villages, and correcting for concerns with the data such as missing entries and incorrectly completed surveys completed, we have real numbers. We have real data from the very last mile. Finally, we can use this data to answer our questions regarding how many kids aren’t being reached by vaccination services and what we can do to improve this. Using this information, we can tailor our program activities in ways that can make the biggest impact and that is what we intend to do.
Before we can share the results publically, we need approval from the Ministry of Health. We’ve started the process and have already shared the results with provincial leaders in Cabo Delgado and Niassa. We will be presenting the results to the Ministry later this month or early next year. We are looking forward to sharing our results with you as soon as possible. Stay tuned.
Jessica Crawford
Program Associate
VillageReach