Background

Lagos State Ministry of Health (LSMOH), Departments, and Agencies are responsible for formulating health policies, setting standards for the delivery of health care, and providing strategic direction for the state. They also allocate resources (including financial and human), and monitor and evaluate health care delivery. This allows health systems to achieve their goals of improving health, reducing health inequalities, securing equity in health care financing, and responding to population needs.

Credible health information depends on a data management system designed for collecting, collating, reporting, analyzing, disseminating, and using data for informed decision-making. Through the HMIS unit within the LSMOH, Lagos State has adopted the routine use of fact sheets to capture and track the status and progress of key health thematic areas. Since 2017, Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF) has provided technical support to the HMIS unit to develop an annual fact sheet for the state’s health sector. This fact sheet contains an aggregation of validated service data for January to December, which is extracted from the District Health Information Software (DHIS) database.

While HSDF has led this intervention over the years, the state’s ownership has improved as it developed the draft of the 2020 HMIS fact sheet.

The fact sheet development process

• One-day fact sheet committee meeting: Members of the fact sheet committee (the Head, Health Statistics Lagos State, Lagos State Health Management System Officer, and HSDF representatives) review the previous year’s fact sheet, implement action points, and adopt indicators for the new fact sheet.
• Data extraction and collision: After the indicators are agreed on and adopted, the data sub-committee extracts data from the DHIS2. Then, data are collated and arranged in a useable format.
• Data cleaning and validation: The data collated is cleaned up and validated. Logical rules are applied to related indicators and compared with historical data to check for unusual patterns and outliers.
• Data updating: After data cleaning, updates are made from other sources. These data are triangulated with complementing sources of data. The process ensures that the report is complete and reliable. 
• Data analysis: Data is analyzed using Microsoft Excel. Then trends are highlighted, changes in related data are observed over time, and comparisons are made between related indicators (including spikes and very low performing indicators).
• Template population: The analyzed data, tables, and graphs are used to populate the fact sheet template.

Summary

The 2020 HMIS fact sheet for Lagos State was developed in March 2021 by the fact sheet committee. Key performance indicators across thematic areas were reviewed, analyzed, and populated on the fact sheet template. The indicators include: facility utilization, reproductive, maternal newborn and child health (RMNCH), family planning (FP), malaria, immunization, adverse drug reaction, HIV/TB, and data quality assessment (DQA) exercises.

Relevance

• The fact sheet provides all stakeholders with compelling information on the status of state health indicators in a clear and concise format.
• The fact sheet is periodic and in line with the Lagos state planning review cycle. This supports data-based decision-making in workplan quarterly review meetings.
• The fact sheet presents analyzed data per thematic area. Program leads and officers can monitor thematic area implementation using the fact sheet.

Download fact sheet here

By HSDF’s Data and Performance Management Team