Is South Africa closing the health gaps between districts? Monitoring progress towards universal health service coverage with routine facility data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

South Africa is committed to advancing universal health coverage (UHC). The usefulness and potential of using routine health facility data for monitoring progress towards UHC, in the form of the 16-tracer WHO service coverage index (SCI), was assessed.

Methods

Alternative approaches to calculating the WHO SCI from routine data, allowing for disaggregation to district level, were explored. Data extraction, coding, transformation and modelling processes were applied to generate time series for these alternatives. Equity was assessed using socio-economic quintiles by district.

Results

The UHC SCI at a national level was 46.1 in 2007-2008 and 56.9 in 2016-2017. Only for the latter period, could the index be calculated for all indicators at a district level. Alt

SUBMITTER: Day C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8435360 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature