Amobine Roger Aleka working on his Family Planning Data
The collection, storage, analysis, dissemination and efficient use of information and the uptake of family planning methods like pills, injectables, and implants by rural women seem unrelated.
But however far-fetched they may look from each other, the later depends on the former for the successful implementation of family planning methods in hard to reach rural areas of the country like Pobaga in the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region.
“We go to a lot of far places to get our clients so it is very important that we do not miss capturing any of the women into our data system,” said Amobine Roger Aleka, Senior community health nurse.
“When we miss them we miss our targets and interventions as well,” he added.
Aleka who also doubles as the team led for data collection at the Bolgatanga municipal health directorate said keeping track of the number of women who take any of the forms of modern contraceptives is the game changer on the part of health professionals in measuring the success of family planning.
“We use the data we collect to ensure the efficient and effective running of our family planning programme and it gives us a sense of our progress towards our set goals,” he indicated.
Aleka said for a community like Pobaga which is dominated by Muslims and Christians the types of contraceptives used by the women differs based on religious backgrounds thus without proper data on their contraceptive uptake interventions may fall through.
“Our data shows that majority of the women there prefer the long term methods which is the Jadel and Implannon because they do not want to always visit the clinic, so with this data we can plan our intervention in such a way that theses two methods will be available to them all the time” he added.
He says the community health nurses are trained in record keeping to enable them capture the important information about clients regarding their experience in contraceptive usage.
“When we visit the clients especially those on the long term methods we take data on whether the method being used has expired or not and re-register those who are continuing for more than a year,” said Adiza Ibrahim one of the community health nurses.
She said the training they received in record keeping has greatly helped to facilitate their work. “With our data sheet we can easily monitor the number of clients we have in our community, where they are and what method they are using,” she said.
Explaining how data helps the municipality to truck and follow up on their clients, Aleka said through their data analysis for the first half of the year, family planning has dropped in the municipality.
“As you can see our half year report for 2016 shows modern contraceptive usage of 29.4 per cent in this area but this year we have 19.8 per cent,” he said. “This means that if we do not intensify our sensitization we will not be able to meet our target of 34 per cent this year.”
Nurse Rotation
Despite the benefits of data to successful implementation of family planning in rural Ghana it is not devoid of challenges.
Nurses rotating from one clinic to the other in the municipality due to the low nurse patient ration as well of inability of the nurses to enter data when on the field do not only break the link nurses develop with their client but also contribute to the reduction of continuous up take of modern contraceptive clients.
“We move from one health center to the other in the region after a few months so unable to keep personal truck of client that is why the data book is important to us,” Adiza said.
Hajia Salamatu Seidu, principal nursing officer and head of the family planning unit of the municipality said data entering is a big challenge because some of the nurses give the services but do not record the data secondly they do not re-register the women who are on the long term contraceptive methods.
“Like the Jadel and Implanno because it is for three to five years before they expire you have to visit the clients and make sure it is there and re-register the person. Some don’t do it so all that affects our data because the continuous clients are also part of the data we need to work with,” she said.
Training
The municipal health directorate with support from Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) has held series of training for its staff particularly community health workers who are in constant touch with clients either at home or at the health center.
The health staff are taken through data recording and management as part of the training as well as how to administer the methods.
Hajia Seidu believes the training has yielded some results so far as data recording is concerned.
“Previously our health staff did not have much knowledge about the importance of data but with the training most community health nurses now have more knowledge about how it is done,” she said.
She said although communities in the municipality are yet to meet the target for family planning, “We hope to see some positive change in modern contraceptive usage by the end of this when we analyze all our data.”
From Jamila Akweley Okertchiri, Bolga, Upper East