April 19, 2017 By Ibrahim Tarawallie
The Ministry of Health and Sanitation has introduced the use of Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) scorecard to assess the performance of priority indicators across implementation of programmes on a quarterly basis.
According to the Deputy Health Minister I, Madina Rahman, while the primary purpose of the scorecard might be to track performance for RMNCAH, it would also enable them to use the indicators as proxy on the overall performance for the health sector.
She stated that despite progress being made in the implementation of the presidential recovery plan, there was need to track the outcome of all efforts in improving access to health services.
She tasked the Reproductive and Child Health Directorate to move the operationalisation of the scorecard downwards, from the national level to ensure that all districts were also able to have an individual scorecard that measures performance across chiefdoms and even health facilities.
“I will ensure that the Ministry of Health uses this tool for management and accountability. I am therefore tasking that the quarterly scorecards are presented and reviewed at our management meetings at all levels of the ministry,” she said.
Because it is a ministry led initiative, Minister Rahman called on development partners to come together to support the ministry in operationalizing the scorecards.
She expressed her appreciation to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) for providing the technical support during the process.
WHO Health Advisor, Alexander Chimbaru congratulated the ministry on the launch of the RMNCAH scorecard and the overall progress in the implementation of initiatives to make health data more accessible.
Given the features described in the scorecard, he reckoned that it would build on previous initiatives and serve as another step to improve the use of data for decision making.
“The only way we can see the progress we make will be to constantly use data that is produced. Now that we have the MNNCAH scorecard, we should move to the next stage which is to make it functional,” he said.
He added that the scorecard can be part of RCH meetings, as well as other management meetings, where it can be discussed, bottlenecks identified and follow-up actions agreed upon and assigned.