Improving imperfect data from health management information systems in Africa using space-time geostatistics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Reliable and timely information on disease-specific treatment burdens within a health system is critical for the planning and monitoring of service provision. Health management information systems (HMIS) exist to address this need at national scales across Africa but are failing to deliver adequate data because of widespread underreporting by health facilities. Faced with this inadequacy, vital public health decisions often rely on crudely adjusted regional and national estimates of treatment burdens.

Methods and findings

This study has taken the example of presumed malaria in outpatients within the largely incomplete Kenyan HMIS database and has defined a geostatistical modelling framework that can predict values for all data that are missing through space and ti

SUBMITTER: Gething PW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1470663 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature