Every Child Counts Dokolo District

IKARE, Dokolo District Local Government and Shifo join hands to improve child health services in Dokolo District. 

In autumn of 2015 a team from Shifo performed stakeholder and gap analyses in Dokolo District in the fields of child health and sleeping sickness, which were initiated and supported by IKARE - the venture philanthropy operated charity whose main donor is IK Investment Partners. The results of the gap analysis led to a new collaboration to implement and evaluate MyChild Card and its sustainability model. Pioneered by Shifo, the sustainability model was developed to ensure that the local government can sustain the outcomes of our collaborative work in the long run.

"Working with Dokolo District Health office, frontline health workers, families with children and IKARE was a rich learning experience for the Shifo team during the gap analysis. In July 2016 we started district-wide implementation of MyChild Card. With the new work processes enabled by MyChild Card, our aim is to improve quality of care for families and children by streamlining administration for the scarce health workers so they can focus on better quality care for children and their families. All the progress reports necessary for health facilities, the District Health Team, Ministry of Health and local Civil Society Organisations will be generated automatically, thanks to MyChild system", says Nargis Rahimi from Shifo.

Located in the northeastern region of Uganda, Dokolo District was established in 2006 as a result of separation from Lira District. Dokolo is home to approximately 182,600 people and about 37,000 children under age of 5. In addition to seventeen fixed health centres, there are also fifty-seven outreach sites that provide vaccination services, for a total of 74 health service delivery points in the district. 

There is a great shortage of health workers in all of the health facilities which provide vaccination services, with only a few facilities having enrolled nurses and many having access only to nursing assistants. Only Dokolo Health Centre 4 has access to reliable electricity, while other health facilities rely on gas containers or solar energy to keep the vaccine fridges at an optimal temperature. Vaccine preventable diseases among children such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, and measles are high with 1949 cases of pneumonia and 1917 occurrences of diarrhoea between January and October in 2015.

"We are looking forward to working with Shifo to free up our health workers from their administration burden as well as to be able to receive reliable data for better decision making, since having reliable and relevant data has always been a challenge for us. I believe that when we receive the gaps data from every health facility on a regular basis, we will be able to tackle the core problems of why our children are still not fully vaccinated and protected in our district" says Samuel Ojok, District Health Officer in Dokolo.

“Having since 2006 been actively involved in the battle against sleeping sickness and nagana in Dokolo and other districts in Northern Uganda, we know only too well the importance of access to reliable data and knowhow in creating awareness at both community and central level as well as addressing the gaps in disease surveillance, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Without basic health infrastructure in place to provide the necessary services and data, measuring progress and impact of activities is impossible as is informed decision making. We are very happy to partner with Shifo and all the district health workers of Dokolo in this first ever district-wide implementation of MyChildCard “ says Anne Holm Rannaleet, Executive Director of IKARE Ltd.

Stay tuned to learn more about the initial progress of implementation in Dokolo soon.