Health Information Systems and Data for Action: Q&A Session

In this Q&A following country presentations on health information systems, participants raised questions around four cross-cutting themes: reaching out-of-school girls, tracking HIV-positive adolescents requiring three HPV doses, managing data collection in low-connectivity rural areas, and the timeline and resources involved in transitioning from paper-based to digital systems. Cameroon’s representative described how opposition from Catholic churches led to the suspension of school-based vaccination, which in turn prompted the development of community-oriented strategies — youth centres, family clubs, markets, and churches — capable of reaching both in- and out-of-school girls; school-based delivery is now being reintroduced for a planned multi-age cohort campaign. Rwanda’s representative clarified that health workers pre-collect eligible girls’ data on paper lists before vaccination sessions, then enter records into the e-Tracker upon return to the health centre; given that 96% of Rwandans have access to a mobile phone, SMS alerts function effectively, and community health workers serve as a relay for households without phones. Tanzania’s representative confirmed that HIV-positive girls requiring three doses are tracked both through facility paper registers and through VIMS from the district level upward, and that TD vaccination for adolescents is also monitored within the same system. Global partners noted that investments in broader immunization information systems — rather than HPV-specific tools alone — yield the strongest programmatic returns, and called for greater data granularity to support catch-up tracking and equity monitoring.

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Media: Video