Govt sets up health Data Consultative C’ttee

ANAMBRA Government has set up Data Consultative Committee to tackle poor health data collection, analysis and management in the state. Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Anambra State Ministry of Health, Mrs Edith Nwachukwu, made this known during the inaugural meeting of the committee atJessie Hotels, Awka.
According to her, the committee had been set up following a directive from Federal Ministry of Health, informing National Council on Health that the body will be inaugurated in all states. She said that the meeting would hold quarterly with support from EU/WHO under the health system strengthening.
“Programme officers and partners in the health sectors will come together to look at issues and challenges as far as data collection is concerned.
“We have come up with communiqué, resolution and action plan that will be circulated to all members of the committee for necessary action.
“We have been able to identify some changes based on data quality assurance that is done in the state by the Federal Ministry of Health.
“We have also looked at human resources from health force registry platform for generating health workforce data.” She adds: “we have been able to see the cadre of all health workers in all facilities, their retirement dates, positions and other findings”.
Health Management Information System Officer, State Ministry of Health, Mr Chizoba Nwabashili explained that the committee was more of advisory body that would look into data issues in the state.
“The committee will discuss printing of revised edition of 2019 Health Management Information System (HMIS) and tools that contain all the indicators needed in tracking activities in health facilities.
“What we are doing now is push system. Once the tools are printed out; we will distribute them to all health facilities and retrieve the old version,” Nwabashili added.
She said that they needed to build capacities of monitoring and evaluation officers at LG levels for them to understand the revised tools.