Health workers learn to monitor activities

HEALTH workers on Lihir Island in New Ireland will now be able to collect data and analyse their delivery of various health programmes.
They learnt how to do this at a week-long training on health information systems under the   Lihir Islands community health programme.
Facilitated by three staff from the New Ireland health division and the Health Department monitoring and research branch, the workers have acquired the skills to effectively do their work.
Emelyn Valaun from the New Ireland health division said the training was usually provided to health workers at health centres and aid-posts to enable them to use raw data collected every month to measure their performance in delivering health services in  rural communities.
In the past, aid-posts collected the data, sent it to supervising health centres to compile monthly reports for the provincial health information office that later compiled and analysed the data.
The report was then sent to the Health Department monitoring and research branch which sent the information back to the health facilities, through the annual sector review.
Lihir is the first sub-district in the province to hold the health information systems training.
Valaun said participants were keen on practicing what they learnt to help people in the communities they served in.