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 HR 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 our iHRIS Manage software, 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. The Project's efforts also supported a memorandum of understanding between the MOH and the CSSC, with the aim of further integrating HR and facility information into a nationwide HR management system.
This work transitioned to a Capacity Project Associate Award in July, called the Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project. The new project continues to work with the FBO sector and is installing appliances in each of the CSSC's 5 zonal offices. All of CSSC's data can then be aggregated at the headquarters office. In the public sector, the new Associate Award 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, the project is focusing on implementing iHRIS Manage at the Prime Minister's Office of Regional and Local Government (PMORALG), which has 137 district health offices. While still in a project planning phase, an initial assessment of 6 offices was conducted; basic data was collected and is now being analyzed to determine of the best way forward for strengthening HRIS at the local level.
The project'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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