Conference abstract
Tracking missed ANC appointments using option B+ weekly SMS reporting in Central Uganda, January-June 2016
Pan African Medical Journal - Conference Proceedings. 2017:6(18).20
Dec 2017.
doi: 10.11604/pamj-cp.2017.6.18.500
Archived on: 20 Dec 2017
Contact the corresponding author
Keywords: ANC Appointments, option B+, reporting, Uganda
Plenary
Tracking missed ANC appointments using option B+ weekly SMS reporting in Central Uganda, January-June 2016
Susan Nakubulwa1,&, Daniel Kadobera1, Alex Riolexus Ario1
1Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program, Kampala, Uganda
&Corresponding author
Susan Nakubulwa, Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program, Kampala, Uganda
Introduction: in 2012, Uganda adopted Option B+ in order to move the country towards the elimination of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (eMTCT). To monitor implementation of the program, the Ministry of Health (MoH) introduced the surveillance system for Option B+ performance indicators to be reported on a weekly basis.
Methods: we abstracted weekly Short Message Service (SMS) data from the eMTCT surveillance platform for the period of October 2016 to March 2017 for Mildmay Uganda (MUg) supported districts of Central Uganda. The data analysis was descriptive.
Results: overall, there was inconsistency in reporting in 2016. However, by March 2017, reporting rates for majority of districts had stabilized to 100%. Gomba District performed best at the Key Performance Indicator of proportion of women with unknown status being tested for HIV at the 1st Antenatal care (ANC) visit, where 100% testing was registered and Mubende District and Entebbe Hospital in Wakiso District scored lowest at 85%. There was inadequate reporting on indicators used for generating the proportion of mothers initiated on Option B+ at Entebbe hospital, Wakiso District. Mityana District registered the highest number of missed antenatal appointments.
Conclusion: there was high improvement in reporting rates on eMTCT indicators for the MUg supported districts by the end of March 2017. However, there were data quality gaps within the SMS weekly reports from the districts. There is need for evaluation of the surveillance system in order to inform implementers of the system on areas that need improvement. Also, there is need to implement quality improvement interventions in poorly reporting health facilities in order to improve on reporting rates on Option B+ indicators. Quality improvement interventions should also be implemented to enable improvement in data quality and tracking of missed antenatal appointments.
