Ethiopia holds training workshop on COVID-19 vaccination data management

ETHIOPIA – The World Health Organization (WHO) in Ethiopia has announced that it is conducting the District Health Information System, software version 2 (DHIS2) training with an aim to digitalize and improve the collection, quality and use of COVID-19 vaccination data.

The WHO Country Office outlined that the DHIS2 training is ongoing in 507 woredas of Ethiopia to reach a total of 1,553 participants in 58 sessions, adding that it made possible by the generous support of United States Department of State (USDOS).

“Ethiopia first began implementation of DHIS2 as their Health Management Information System (HMIS) in 2016, and achieved implementation at national scale in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck,” the specialized public health agency said.

The agency further said that the trainees were drawn from the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and health management information system units of Ethiopia’s woredas.

“The Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) shifted from HMIS to DHIS2 aiming towards integration of data from different regions which enable to conduct data use and analysis at all levels of the health sector,” WHO said.

The health organization further revealed that the COVID-19 vaccination data collection integration into the health information system aims to capture tracker and aggregate data as well as to manage Ethiopia’s electronic vaccination registry.

“The DHIS2 has become the world’s largest health-information management system, used by 73 low- and middle-income countries in 2022. Ethiopia is one of these countries that adopted DHIS2 as its nationwide health information system platform,” WHO underscored.

In addition, the latest training will help the system to avoid parallel reporting of COVID-19 vaccination data through google sheet which was used as a temporary means as well as improve the data discrepancy observed among the two platforms.

“WHO is currently supporting this training technically and financially since July 2022 to cover 51% of the total woredas in seven regions namely Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Somali, SNNP, South-West Ethiopia Peoples, Afar and Oromia,” WHO highlighted.

The WHO Country Office disclosed that the remaining 49% woredas were trained earlier by Ministry of health and other partners while noting that the COVID-19 vaccination data collection has been integrated in the DHIS2 platform since 2021.

“The training has improved the digitalization and quality of COVID-19 vaccination data and enable every woreda for better data use and performance monitoring. The system includes a digital certificate component that allows for the generation of vaccine certificates for travellers,” the agency added.

So far, six regions SNNP, South-West Ethiopia Peoples, Benshangul Gumuz, Oromia, Amhara and Afar completed the training and the remaining Somali region training is scheduled to be conducted from October 17 to October 20, 2022.

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