Human Resources for Health Data Collected in Southern Sudan

One of the Capacity Project’s objectives in Southern Sudan is to establish a national human resources information system (HRIS) that provides current data for health workforce planning and management. A key challenge has been connecting data from the ten states to a central database housed in the Ministry of Health (MOH). In Fall 2007, the Project strengthened and restructured an existing Access database to include information from paper-based registries, added pull-down menus to minimize errors, increased security and guided the development of a coding system. Project staff created standardized data-collection forms to gather information on qualified health workers from training schools and health facilities, and trained MOH staff on data collection and entry. Project and MOH staff are using the forms to collect information from 23 sites in the ten states, and expect to complete data entry by the end of February. Project staff will then merge and clean the data, design reports and conduct a stakeholder leadership meeting with training on how to use the HRIS and create reports.