Integrated Database System for Hiv/aids Management: a Case of Kicoshep-kenya

Abstract

Kicoshep is a national NGO founded in 1990 in Kibera slums with the aim of supporting communities to cope with the impact of HIV/AIDS and provide home-based care services to the people living with HIV (PLHIV) and their families. The organization has grown from a small clinic providing home based care services and palliative care to a national NGO currently operating in the following counties: Nairobi, Kisumu, Machakos, Busia and Migori. According to organization capacity assessment (OCA), Kicoshep had various gaps that needed to be addressed for it to be able to run effectively and efficiently. Some of the main gaps were on: (i) HIV/AIDS data collection tool; (ii) HIV/AIDS data management; and (iii) a dashboard for all interventions. The HIV/AIDS data for Kicoshep was scattered in various programmes because the organization has many activities related to HIV/AIDS. The main objective was to enhance HIV/AIDS data management for effective and efficient delivery of health care services to vulnerable communities in areas of operation. Other specific objectives were to develop data collection tools for all programme, to integrate HIV/AIDS data through development of a good quality database system, to train staff on management of database system, to integrate HIV data into database system for planning and decision making. The data collection for the database were from home based care, palliative care, orphans and vulnerable children, referrals, counseling, voluntary counseling testing (vct) voluntary medical male circumcision (vmmc), people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) and any other health diseases. The project was implemented through reviewing of the previous data collection tool that was in use, finding out how the data was captured, stored, analyzed and utilized. The results were as follows; improved data collection tool and currently being used for data collection and reporting each week during programme meetings, developed database system using Microsoft Access which is in use by the organization and after the development, integrated all the data from various pragrammes into one central point for easier retrieval of data when needed urgently, planning and decision making. The database system is being used currently by the organization to capture, store, analyze and disseminate as well as use the data for planning and decision making on matters related to their clients towards service delivery, improved patients follow ups through the use of database system, improved data accuracy and built the capacity of 10 Kicoshep staff trough training on monitoring and evaluation and database system management. Therefore, since the monitoring and evaluation is an important tool for identifying and documenting successful projects and programme in any given organization, Kicoshep need to adopt M/E in their programme in tracking the implementation, resources and outputs of the projects and prgrammes. Based on the results Kicoshep need to consider putting more emphases on capacity building of the staff to strengthen monitoring and evaluation and for sustainability of the project, the organization to consider equipping the health centre with necessary materials to avoid much referrals to other facilities, Kicoshep ought to invest resource mobilization to support M/E for quality data in order to have proper decisions depending on the patterns of the data and Kicoshep need to have M/E policy for all programme to be monitored to ensure efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the programmes.