Objectives
Each round of the bi-annual Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Week (MNCHW) delivers core nutrition and health interventions to approximately 25 million children and 2 million women. The lack of a robust monitoring system was a barrier to improving the programmes performance. A monitoring system using SMART tablets was developed with the aim of improving the programmes performance efficiency, effectiveness and accountability.
Methods
An external monitoring process was operationalised following triple R approach’ whereby the campaign was monitored in Real-time using SMART tablets, data were analysed and Reported real-time to States officials for immediate Response. The exercise collected pre-implementation information to determine bottlenecks.
Results
In the June 2015 round, monitoring was undertaken in 33 States covering 2,253 health facilities-20% of health facilities conducting the campaign. Stock outs of vitamin A capsules, deworming and iron tablets were reported by 3%, 27% and 33% of facilities respectively. Alerts were raised for stock-outs to the States focal point through the Federal Operation room. The correct dose of vitamin A and deworming tablets for age were given in 97% and 90% of cases respectively. Staff shortages were noted in 52% of facilities.
Conclusions
Vitamin A supply is generally sufficient during the campaign. Supply of deworming tablets and Iron Folate tablets are of more concern. The quality of services received during the campaign are relatively good however, inadequate human resources needs to be addressed. The use of rapid SMS as a tool to validate replenishment of reported stock outs at facility level during the campaign is being piloted.
