MCHIP works closely with the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Roll Back Malaria
(RBM) Partnership community including key stakeholders in maternal health and child health
to support the reduction in the global burden of malaria morbidity and mortality. MCHIP does
this by helping to improve the quality of malaria programs, strengthening health systems, and
helping countries achieve sustained results. A critical aspect of health systems strengthening is
ensuring that appropriate high quality data on malaria service delivery is available to
policymakers and program managers.
Obtaining reliable, valid, and timely malaria service data, especial data related to the control of
malaria in pregnancy (MIP) is challenging. Although population-based MIP indicators are very
useful, the timing of population-based surveys, which generally occur every two to five years, is
too infrequent for program monitoring. National health management information system
(HMIS) data are more frequently collected, complement survey data, and have the potential to
be more useful for ongoing service improvement and decision-making. However, the quality of
HMIS data in low-income settings is poor; often data are missing, report formats are outdated,
and reporting is late. Furthermore, it is not widely known what data are being recorded at the
facility level, what data are reported up through the health system, and whether those data are
being used at the facility.
MCHIP conducted a review of national HMIS in selected PMI focus countries to improve
understanding of how ministries of health—both National Malaria Control Programs (NMCP)
and Reproductive Health Units—are monitoring and reporting their MIP-related program
results, and how the data are being used. This activity fits within a larger review of routine
maternal and newborn health data collection systems by MCHIP in the same six countries plus
other non-PMI/ non-malaria endemic countries.
PMI countries selected for this review include Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Mali, Tanzania,
and Uganda. Each of these countries is among the19 focus countries benefiting from PMI, which
is implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The review focuses on the public
sector and examines how HMIS and supplemental routine data collection and reporting
strategies are used at different levels of the health system to capture MIP indicators. The
review describes MIP information, data quality gaps, and best practices.
This report presents findings from the review, recommendations on priority indicators that
should be monitored at the facility level, data collection formats, as well as ways to interpret
and use data to improve services and ways to report data up through the health system.
Information from this report, along with the other five country reviews, will be used to propose
revisions to the World Health Organization (WHO)/RBM manual, MIP: Guidelines for
Measuring Key Monitoring and Evaluation Indicators.
The findings and recommendations from this review will be shared with the countries to help
improve their routine monitoring systems. Findings and recommendations will also be shared
with PMI, as well as the RBM MIP working group and RBM Monitoring and Evaluation
Reference Group, for further review, discussion, and development of final recommendations for
global and country levels.