Accuracy and quality of immunization information systems in forty‐one low income countries

Abstract

Summaryobjectives To measure the accuracy and quality of immunization information systems in a range of low-income countries eligible to receive GAVI support. results Almost half of countries obtained a VF below 80% and only nine showed consistently high VF and QS scores. The most frequent weaknesses in the information systems were inconsistency of denominators used to estimate coverage, poor availability of guidelines (e.g. for late reporting), incorrect estimations of vaccine wastage and lack of feedback on immunization performance. In all six countries that failed a first DQA and undertook a second DQA, the VF and all QSs improved, not all of them statistically significantly.conclusions The DQA is a diagnostic tool to reveal a number of crucial problems that affect the quality of immunization data in all tiers of the health system. It identifies good performance at HU and district levels which can be used as examples of best practices. The DQA methodology brings data quality issues to the top of the agenda to improve the monitoring of immunization coverage.

A Review of Data Quality Assessment Methods for Public Health Information Systems

“…The main aims of the studies are assessing the quality of data (19 publications [30,34,42,44,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60]) and assessing the performance of the PHIS (17 publications [15,22,34,40,42,45,50,58,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69]). Five studies assessed data use and explored the factors influencing data use [26,27,52,70,71].…”

“…Ten were in the maternal and children’s health setting, e.g., immunization, childbirth, maternal health and hand-foot-mouth disease [47,53,56,57,58,68,69,70,72,73]. Another five were delivered in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention and care [48,49,63,65,67].…”

Timeliness of childhood vaccinations in 31 low and middle-income countries

“…Children for whom health cards were not available might have a poorer vaccination status and possibly received less timely vaccination, which would result in overestimated vaccination coverage and better age-appropriate vaccination in our analysis than in the whole population. The reliability of information based on health cards is also sometimes questionable; this was discussed especially for former communist countries, but might persist in societal structures despite political transitions 30. Furthermore, our analysis was restricted only to variables available in the children datasets.…”

Effects of Results Based Financing Models on Data Quality Improvement in Benin on 2014

“…Using LQAS method and a 5% threshold, they observed a discrepancy of over 25% of maternity and immunization data. Others similar findings of low accuracy of data regarding the immunization were made in several low-income countries between 2001 and 2004, and more recently in Côte d'Ivoire [8,20].…”

“…However, large deficits in data quality are reported in low-income countries where the RBF is mostly applied [8]. For instance in immunization programs, discrepancy between reported and actual coverage increased since GAVI started supporting health systems [9].…”