[afro-nets] RFI: How to establish a working HMIS in northernNigeria (8)

["Emmanuel Otolorin" <eotolorin@jhpiego.net>]

RFI: How to establish a working HMIS in northernNigeria (8)
----------------------------------------------------------

Mohammed,

I just want to add that the state of the NHMIS is just one symptom of near total systems failure in many of our health facilities. Other major issues that have to be addressed include lack of water, electricity, inability to provide 24-hour access to services, shortage of staff (especially nurse-midwives at PHCs), inadequate knowledge and skills of the staff, lack of transportation and communication facilities, the well-known "out-of-stock" syndrome for drugs and consumable medical supplies, leaking roofs, clinic floors with "potholes", very poor infection prevention practices, and sometimes out rightly dangerous practices like using contaminated needles as office pins! 

Therefore, it is equally important to fix some of these systems issues in order to generate enough service utilization worthy of the NHMIS. Otherwise, one may develop excellent data collection instruments and processes only to record near zero service utilization on the forms. Best wishes. The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.

'Dipo 
mailto:eotolorin@jhpiego.net