The registrar, Health Record Officers Registration Board of Nigeria (HRORBN), Alhaji Mohammed Mami, has criticised Nigeria’s data gathering system, saying that the data generated cannot be used for any international comparison. He said that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), an organ of government recognised to give information on all aspects of the nation’s economy, health, education among others, only comes out with cumulated data which are not up to international standard. In an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP in Abuja, Mami maintained that most of the health data generated in the country are inaccurate as they are conducted by personnel who have no experience in the field.“We have a lot of data domiciled in these hospitals. As close as Abuja is to the Federal Ministry of Health, I can say emphatically that even the National Hospital that is supposed to be under the Federal Ministry of Health and located here in Abuja is not sending data to the Federal Ministry of Health and no official of the ministry is taking it as a responsibility to demand for these data. So, if the centre which is within a walking distance is not able to collate, what do you think would happen to the teaching hospitals, the Federal Medical Centres, the Specialist Hospitals, the state-owned hospitals and the primary healthcare centres?”
The HRORBN registrar added that the data are not there because the right tool to collect them are not there also, and where they are available, they are only found in lucrative hospitals. He said if a student wants to do research or a doctor wants to conduct research in Bauchi, he does not need to travel down to the place; rather, he should be able to log in to the website either of the board or of the Federal Ministry of Health and look for the particular data he wants in a particular local government because the district health information management system is designed in such a way that it captures every ward, local government, state and federal level.
“So, it should be able to say that this particular case is coming from this particular ward in this particular local government in the state and that is the job the health record officers are supposed to be doing because they have direct contact with the patients’ health information. “So, the information they are giving is the raw data and they are collecting it direct from the source. The record that the HRO is giving is a primary data and not a secondary data.” He said that agencies like the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) should have HROs who are trained by WHO standards to manage these data that are not available.
Mami counselled tiers of government to demand these data before approving budgets for these respective agencies. “That is how it is supposed to be done. You should be able to tell me, for example, that you are requesting for N10million for the treatment of malaria because of its incidence. You should be able to tell us that you need these drugs because you have a particular number of pregnant women that are on an anti-malarial drug, or that you need this number of equipment because your hospital’s patients’ rate has gone high and that you want to open another ward with 20 beds. “You must be able to do that and not for government to approve budget for them arbitrarily. “You cannot account for these monies when you don’t have data. But I know that even if you make it a precondition, they will just sit down and formulate one data. There are no data there for you to compare; go to their website, there is no data,” Mami lamented.
Source:Leadership Online
