Improving Data Analysis and Use in Uganda

This Spring, the Uganda Capacity Program (UCP), a Capacity Project Associate Award, held a Human Resources for Health (HRH) Data Analysis and Use Workshop. The week long program brought together key HRH decision makers, including representatives from Uganda’s four professional health councils, the Ministry of Health, and private not-for-profit organizations.  

The workshop primarily focused on data analysis and use at the central level. “There is a lot of information which is being generated every day,” says Dr. Charles Matsiko, HRH policy & planning senior advisor for UCP, “but some of this information is never used by the managers of the health system. So we are trying to bridge this gap by strengthening the national HRIS to generate information for decision-making.”

Participants were trained to use information on a daily basis and were given a demonstration of the iHRIS software. Ruth Nabagala, monitoring and evaluation officer at Uganda Protestants Medical Bureau (UPMB), attended the workshop. Since the UPMB’s HRH data is currently kept in paper files, she looks forward to an electronic system such as iHRIS Manage, “There is need to know the current health workers in health facilities under UPMB, their details regarding qualifications, license and registration.” She adds that this kind of training is timely, “I could not come up with enough (health workforce) details given the difficulty managing data manually. This training has enabled me realize that an HRIS can help you to know the number of health workers and employees you have in your network, those that have left and the gaps that need to be filled.”

Another participant, Ahimbisibwe Maureen from the Allied health Professional Council, considers this kind of training to be very important, “One lesson I have learnt is that every piece of data is important for records management, and that data should be managed well so it's easily accessible in the future.”

The next step is for UCP to train decision makers at the district level. Follow up workshops are planned for 40 of Uganda’s 83 districts.

Read a similar article about the UCP workshop on the IntraHealth website here.