In a very crowded hotel meeting room in Bamako, brimming with dozens of dignitaries and officials from all levels of the health system along with a wide variety of partners, a special award ceremony recognized the winners of a unique competition.
Organized by the Ministry of Health and Social Development (MSDS), with technical and financial support from USAID’s Country Health Information Systems and Data Use (CHISU) program, this competition recognized health facilities for the quality of the data they submitted to DHIS2, Mali’s national health information system.
Data quality is a central challenge in health systems like Mali’s, which is why it is a key component of our participatory quality improvement (QI) work. Improved data reporting and data quality contribute to improved disease surveillance and informed, timely decision-making. We work alongside both community health centers (CSComs) and reference health centers (CSRéfs) to help them develop and implement data management systems within their contexts that report timely, reliable data to DHIS2.
On this occasion, the winners were being announced for the CSComs, CSRefs and hospitals who submitted the highest quality routine malaria data in 2023. Scoring was based on four indicators including completeness, timeliness, internal and external coherence of their data as well as and the stock of malaria-related products.
This competition was actually the second one organized by CHISU – the first was initiated in 2023 based on the quality of COVID-19 epidemiological data submitted to DHIS2. In that competition, two of our partners were recognized: the Commune IV CSRéf won the CSRéf competition and our partner ASACODJENEKA placed second among CSComs.
This second competition yielded even better results for our partners. The top five scoring CSComs in Bamako were ASACOKA, ASACOS, ASACOMA, ANIASCO, ASACOLABASAD – four of whom are Mali Health quality improvement partners. The Commune IV CSRéf, a partner of ours for ten years which oversees more of our quality improvement partners than any other district in Bamako, placed 2nd among CSRéfs.
The winners were recognized with certificates, a variety of supplies and equipment, and training and capacity-building support. Their efforts were rightly celebrated and the satisfaction of the winners at having their efforts recognized was encouraging.
For us, the highlight of the event was when the winning CSCom and our partner, ASACOKA, was invited to share a presentation on their best practices for improving data quality. ASACOKA, located in Kalabambougou, opened in 2019 and our partnership began in 2021. Their presentation included the processes and protocols that helped them achieve their success and it was gratifying to see how many of those practices were put in place in the context of their quality improvement work. While we helped to provide tools, methods, skills and confidence – the data quality practices, results, and success were entirely theirs.
As the ceremony concluded, other CSCom partners mentioned to our team how the data quality standards and processes they learned and implemented within the context of our QI partnership were factors in their success, as well.
These results are significant not only because of the performance of our QI partners, but because they have sustained that performance over time, under the leadership of their own quality improvement teams. The key sustainability strategy of our participatory quality improvement work is local ownership and leadership from the beginning, so that CSCom and CSRef personnel develop the processes and protocols that ensure quality healthcare, or in this case, quality data.
