Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Wakiso District Local Government with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation through Amref Health Africa is implementing a project aimed at increasing demand and access to COVID-19 vaccination in Wakiso district. One of the project aims is to improve COVID-19 data management through supporting health facilities to harness COVID-19 vaccination data and ensure that backlog and new COVID-19 vaccination records are entered into the Health Management Information System (HMIS) - epivac. This project is being implemented in Busiro East and Busiro South Health Sub Districts (HSDs).
Training workshops on COVID-19 vaccination data management were organised for health data officers, data volunteers, Expanded Programme for Immunisation (EPI) focal persons, and other healthcare workers who are actively involved in handling COVID-19 vaccination data from public health facilities. The training was led by Ms. Edith Namulondo the Wakiso District Biostatistician, together with the data officers at the two HSD headquarters (Kajjansi Health Centre IV and Wakiso Health Centre IV for Busiro South and Busiro East respectively). The workshops took place on 8th and 9th December 2022 at the respective health facilities and were attended by over 60 participants over the 2 days.
During the workshops, participants were trained on how to complete COVID-19 vaccination data on the Smart Paper Technology (SPT), which is currently the latest data entry system which uses scanners to upload vaccination records within a short time. During the training sessions, facilitators and participants highlighted common errors made when filling in the SPT forms. Ms. Namulondo noted that Busiro South and Busiro East vaccination rates were poor compared to other health sub districts in Wakiso district. Ms. Namulondo also informed the participants that a lot of data within Wakiso district had not been entered into epivac due to errors. She urged the participants to avoid mistakes while completing SPT forms because it was a main cause of data backlog in the district. The participants were also taught how to directly input COVID-19 vaccination data into the epivac system. Most participants shared challenges faced while entering COVID-19 vaccination data, and discussions on how to improve moving forward were held.
The Project Coordinator, Mr. Paineto Masengere emphasized the objectives of the project to the participants. He called for their cooperation while supporting entry of COVID-19 vaccination data backlog. On behalf of the MakSPH team, he pledged to offer support to achieve this objective as planned by the project. He also urged the participants to deliver as expected of them when the vaccination outreaches start in January 2023. Mr. Masengere concluded by thanking the participants for their active engagements during the workshops. At the end of the workshops, it was agreed that final planning was to be done to ensure cleaning and entry of existing COVID-19 vaccination records commences.
Compiled by: Paineto Masengere and Suzan Nakalawa
