ZANZIBAR—The East African Community (EAC) has launched the 2022 Reproductive, Maternal, New-Born, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) Digital Scorecard for the government of Zanzibar.
The scorecard’s launch comes at a time when maternal and child mortality rates remain a significant challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, as highlighted by the United Nations’ report that records 70% of the estimated 287,000 maternal deaths recorded in 2020 occurred in the region.
The launch of this digital scorecard was officiated by the Minister of Health in the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, Nassor Ahmed Mazrui.
In his speech, Mazrui emphasized the importance of the scorecard as an innovative intervention aimed at promoting accountability and improving access to health data, information, and knowledge sharing for better results, better tracking, and stronger oversight for women’s and children’s health.
The scorecard is expected to facilitate the tracking of key maternal and child health indicators, identification of bottlenecks, and drive action to inform policymaking at the national and regional level.
The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar plans to use the scorecard as a critical decision-making tool to ensure the availability of standard antenatal care services throughout Zanzibar, thereby reducing the need for expecting mothers to travel long distances seeking medical services.
As part of its commitment to improving the health sector, the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar has set aside funds for the construction of district hospitals throughout Zanzibar, an initiative that is currently underway.
According to Mazrui, all district hospitals currently under construction are expected to be fully operational by June 2023, along with one regional hospital by July 2023.
The EAC Secretariat has been implementing different digital health systems since 2013, providing linkages and inter-operability with counterpart systems in EAC Partner States.
The RMNCAH Scorecard was established in 2014, making it the first scorecard by a Regional Economic Community (REC) in the African Union. The EAC has since supported other RECs like SADC to establish similar initiatives.
The EAC health scorecard tracks progress made by EAC Partner States in the implementation of RMNCAH against global, continental, and regional commitments.
Over the years, the scorecard has evolved to cover a broad range of EAC regional health issues, including pandemics and health financing.
In addition to digitizing the scorecard, the EAC Secretariat has constituted an EAC Experts’ Working Group on Digital Health, Data, Technologies, and Innovation (DIDATI).
The working group is a multi-disciplinary team of technology-minded professionals under the health sector, tasked with reviewing and providing technical guidance to a number of EAC regional digital health systems.
This initiative is in line with the Community’s objective of establishing resilient digital health systems that can facilitate real-time updates of disease outbreaks as well as support the scientific evaluation of the performance of various health interventions.
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