A Review of the Maternal and Newborn Health Content of National Health Management Information Systems in 13 Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

MCHIP supports programming in maternal, newborn, and child health, immunization, family planning, malaria, nutrition, and HIV/AIDS, and strongly encourages opportunities for integration. Cross-cutting technical areas include water, sanitation, hygiene, urban health, and health systems strengthening. Strengthening routine monitoring of essential interventions for maternal and newborn health (MNH) is highly relevant and important as the global community moves to a post-Millennium Development Goal health and development agenda. An increasing number of global initiatives have emerged that emphasize improved measurement of maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) service delivery. These initiatives include Every Woman, Every Child, the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children's Health, Every Newborn Action Plan, and USAID's Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths initiative. National health management information systems (HMIS) are essential for decision-making, improving the quality of care, and routinely tracking progress toward national and subnational objectives. HMIS registers and client records are critical management tools for both preventive and curative services. Service-generated data derived from facilities and patient-provider interactions covering aspects such as care offered, quality of care, and treatments administered, and outcomes, are an essential source of health-related information. MCHIP conducted a desk review of HMIS data collection forms and reporting formats in 13 countries to understand the current status of national health management information system capacity to capture indicators of the content and quality of antenatal care (ANC) and labor and delivery (L&D) services. The review aimed to gauge the scale of work yet to be done to improve the utility of health management information systems. The results and recommendations emerging from the review are summarized in this report. The importance of HMIS lies in their ability to provide reliable, valid, and timely service data, especially data related to the delivery of priority lifesaving interventions. However, the quality of HMIS data in low-income settings is often poor, with data often missing, report formats outdated, and reporting late. These problems are often a result of too many registers, a lack of time for managing the registers, a lack of training in completing registers and reporting formats, a lack of motivation, and a lack of perceived utility of data. MCHIP has contributed to the reduction of maternal, newborn, and child mortality in more than 40 countries, contributing to progress toward Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. Through its global and country-level programming, MCHIP has led efforts to improve the quality of maternal and newborn health (MNH) care. This includes supporting ministries of health in the delivery of key lifesaving and preventative interventions to every pregnant woman and newborn who needs them and in the measurement and documentation of these interventions. MCHIP has promoted indicators that measure quality of service delivery and priority interventions at the country and global level.