Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIA has launched a digital accelerated plan, Afya Supportive Supervision (AfyaSS), which among other things aims to support health facilities, councils and regional health management teams in close supervision and monitoring The plan was launched by Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children Dr Dorothy Gwajima in Dodoma.
The launch which was conducted during the recent district and regional medical officers annual meeting, among other things intends to support the government in coordinating health departments.
Minister Gwajima said the plan which is sponsored by Path, a global health organization, is expected to support the government in coordinating health departments through the use of mobile application to enable collection of data at health facilities.
Dr Gwajima said in the process of improving health services, evaluation is very important to mitigate challenges raised, by referring to data from the system concerning the performance of health servants as well as analysing medicines provided by Medical Stores Department (MSD) and check the deficiency in the stock.
“If one wants to be categorised as a good servant, one should always be willing to be evaluated. The system is to enable us access details of health servants in supervising the implementation of health projects set by the ministry,” she said Chairperson of Regional Medical Officers (RMOs) Association, Dr Japhet Simeo assured on the use of AfyaSS through input of information at health facilities.
He added that the system is to create easy access even among themselves for gaining resilient context in solving challenges, especially from Covid-19. AfyaSS aims for coherent and effective process through improved coordination of different facility supervision and assessments, use of data before, during and after facility supervision.
Moreover, the project also intends to harmonise and interlink supervision tools and consolidate coherent action plans for improved implementation of and follow up on supervision.
Elaborating further on the project, Dr Chrisogone German from the Ministry of Health, who is overseeing the AfyaSS project, said the platform provides many features for different actors in the health system.
“In addition to the main online platform, a mobile application is available for teams to collect data whilst at health facilities and the system will provide highlights to different users,” she said.
She added that council, regional and national level teams that conduct supervision visits will be able to view current scheduled supervision and reschedule accordingly.
Moreover, she said input information at the health facility in a mobile application works on and offline and also one can use the mobile application to review feedback with the facility staff, update facility’s action plan and get a signature from the supervisor to complete the visit.
She said the new supervision system will make work easier for health workers and managers by helping them to organize priorities and follow through with performance recommendations for better planned and coordinated undertakings.
It will also allow for better use of supervision data by the supervisions teams, health facilities and government and ultimately streamline quality improvement action plan that include a timeline and budget implications for planning and accountability that will enable health facilities to achieve performance targets.
