Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed incredible additional pressure on health systems across Africa. It has highlighted once again the crucial importance of having timely reliable data and information to make decisions when time is of essence.
Data and information that help to assess the impact of the disease – knowing, for instance, the number of people infected in a specific area – will affect the ability of policy makers to decide when it is time to impose a lockdown or curfew, whom to vaccinate first, and how better to continue guaranteeing routine health services.
Reliable health data and information are also conducive to greater public trust: the COVID-19 crisis has shown how crucial they are in combatting fake news and misinformation, as well as ensuring adherence to health-related recommendations.
In fact, there has never been so much information available across the African continent.
Most countries in the Region already have or are presently putting in place systems to compile and analyze health data that is used to: (1) assess the incidence, distribution and control of disease; (2) review health programmes; or (3) plan for future needs and set priorities for the health system.
The quality of health information has a very real impact on people’s lives
The problem often lies with the quality of health data, analysis and evidence produced and their accessibility. Timeliness, accuracy, completeness, reliability, validity, precision, integrity, consistency, and relevancy are all elements that determine the quality of data.
Poor or incomplete health data will negatively impact the ability to understand a problem and take the appropriate action. It leads policy makers to make incorrect or unsuitable decisions when allocating resources or prioritizing interventions. These will ultimately hurt the most vulnerable.
In many countries, fragmented health information systems are another major impediment in accessing health evidence. Data are captured in different formats, stored in different locations, and managed by different authorities. This increases the time and costs of searching for data.
In the absence of high-quality data, decisions are often based on guessed estimates associated with wastage, increase costs, and result in poorer services.
Ministries of health may have uneven technological, financial and human resource capacity to collect, process and disseminate the required data. Accuracy in compiling and processing data is greatly affected by the competencies of the health personnel. Skills for analyzing and synthesizing health data and for generation of evidence are also limited in many countries in the African Region.
Beyond data and statistics
But fixing data gaps will only lead to better policies if the collected data is then assembled and made actionable in ways that can be useful to inform decision makers, shifting the focus to evidence and knowledge.
Evidence of best practices, recommendations and lessons learned can then be shared from one country to another, and experts across the Region can learn from each other and find common solutions to improve the health and well-being of populations.
What is WHO doing to improve health information?
The WHO has been providing on-going support to respond to these challenges and help further the availability and sharing of high-quality data and information in the Region and elsewhere.
Among the initiatives focusing on improving the quality of health data and information, WHO has been working on the Score for Health Data Technical Package[1], which was designed to identify strengths and weaknesses in a country’s data and health information systems and guide limited resources to areas with the greatest impact.
At WHO’s Regional Office for Africa, the Research, Design and Innovation Unit has been working on a framework that will help ministries of health to strengthen their use of data, evidence and research for health policy making.
The integrated African Health Observatory (iAHO) offers a real-time overview of the health sector in the African region
The Regional Office has also been redesigning and upgrading the integrated African Health Observatory[2] (iAHO), which hosts the Regional Health Observatory (AHO) together with the National Health Observatories (NHOs) of the 47 Member States of the WHO African Region. This online health intelligence portal aims at providing an extensive real-time view of what is happening in the health sector and how the health of populations in the Region is progressing.
The open access resource is home to multiple additional inter-connected regional and country- specific platforms focusing on capturing health information in the form of data, analytics, and knowledge.
Training and technical assistance will continue to be provided to strengthen the skills required to compile quality data and to make sense of the trends and distributions observed.
Besides offering easier access to high-quality data and statistics, the iAHO platform aims at increasing the visibility of key analytics and knowledge products useful for evidence-informed decision-making, offering a stage for health actors to engage and exchange.
Structured around three pillars of health information: data and statistics; analytics; knowledge and evidence, and drawing directly from the health information of WHO regional Members States, the iAHO platform contributes to the overall effort to strengthen health systems and ultimately improve design, delivery, and monitoring of health services to individuals, households, and communities in the African Region
[1] World Health Organization. (2020). SCORE for health data technical package: essential interventions. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/334005
[2] https://aho.afro.who.int/af