Demonstrating the iHRIS Manage system to
stakeholders in Tanzania.
As with many other sub-Saharan countries, Tanzania is experiencing a serious shortage of health workers. Compounding this is a lack of accessible information on the total number of health workers in the country and where they are deployed. For instance, faith-based organizations (FBOs) manage 40 percent of health facilities in the country and provide approximately 50 percent of health services, but their facility and human resources for health (HRH) data have not been integrated with the national health information system. To successfully strengthen health worker information, Tanzania needs to bring together FBO and government stakeholders to share information.
Starting in 2005, the Capacity Project explored ways to enhance health information sharing between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the country's largest FBO, the Christian Social Services Commission (CSSC). As a result of several stakeholder leadership workshops, the CSSC decided to migrate its existing data on 850 facilities and 14,000 health workers into iHRIS Manage, which will allow for integration with the MOH's existing health management information system (HMIS). The Capacity Project responded by installing an iHRIS appliance, loaded with iHRIS Manage, at the CSSC headquarters in Dar es Salaam. The Project's efforts also supported a memorandum of understanding between the MOH and the CSSC, with the aim of further integrating HRH and facility information into a nationwide HRH management system.
HRIS strengthening work transitioned to a Capacity Project Associate Award in July 2009, the Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project (THRP). THRP continues to work with the FBO sector and installed appliances in each of the CSSC's 5 zonal offices. All of CSSC's data can now be aggregated at the headquarters office. In the public sector, THRP is taking a different approach and is strengthening HRIS from the' bottom up,' starting with the districts. While the MOH is leading HMIS strengthening at the central level, THRP is focusing on implementing iHRIS Manage at the Prime Minister's Office of Regional and Local Government (PMO-RALG), which has 137 district health offices. While still in a project planning phase, an initial assessment of two district offices(Makete & Kondoa) was conducted; basic data was collected and analyzed. The first phase of implementation covering six districts is scheduled to start on May 10 in Kondoa Dodoma. The other five districts will follow thereafter.
THRP is partnering with the University of Dar Es Salaam (UDSM) to support and sustain the iHRIS Manage software. Together they conducted the first local iHRIS developer training course in October 2009 to further the Tanzanian developers' understanding of iHRIS Manage and for them to become comfortable modifying it and creating customized reports. Following the training, a google group was set up for the developers to continue collaboration and communication, THRP and UDSM are developing a standard user manual that will be used by all iHRIS partners/users (PMO-RALG, CSSC) . A second developer training was conducted in April 2010 and was attended by a developer from the Uganda Capacity Project, another Capacity Project Associate Award. The developer trainings and user materials can be modified and replicated not only in Tanzania but in other countries as well, allowing additional groups of local developers to gain experience working with iHRIS and customizing it to meet their specific country's needs.
THRP's goal in Tanzania is to eventually have a functional HRIS that captures data on all the health sectors - national, private, and faith-based. CSSC and PMORALG information will combine with the MOH to have a national picture. In Tanzania, public and private sector health workers can be managed more effectively to meet the country's most pressing needs for health services.
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