MyChild Card integrated into work processes in Mukono Health Centre IV, Mukono District, Uganda

As recently as October 2015 more than half of the children who came to Mukono Health Centre IV for immunisation services left without their details being entered in the Child Register. Located in Mukono – a district in central Uganda, it is a health centre with a high patient flow of 100-150 coming for vaccination services per day, all served by one nurse, along with one medical records assistant, whose job it is to register the details of what services each child has received in the Child Register.

In November 2015, MyChild Card was introduced in the health centre as the result of Every Child Counts, MyChild system in Uganda and Afghanistan supported by IKEA Foundation and with support from district health leadership.

Today, it has begun to be integrated into the work of the immunisation department in the delivery of preventive child services (including immunisation; monitoring nutritional status, growth and development; HIV prevention and counselling; and provision of supplements such as Vitamin A and deworming), and the documentation related to said services. 

MyChild Card replaces the paper-based Child Registers used previously, and enables

• Birth registration with unique identification number
• Child-centred care delivery 
• Reduced administration and reporting time for health workers
• Reliable data to identify and close gaps within preventive child health service delivery

Shifo's director of Implementation & Operations, Shuhrat Yusuf explained, "this implementation illustrates for us the importance of having a clear picture during transition of the role of every key actor. When people know the end-vision and know about their specific role during and after the transition, they will unite and support each other and successfully come to the operations phase, which is where we are now".

Dr Geoffrey Kasirye, the in-charge at Mukono Health Centre IV reports that every child is registered and can be followed up, thanks to defaulter lists that are automatically generated by MyChild system. "MyChild card is empowering my staff. It reduces on time taken in following up cases, improves on report making and helps us with proper record-keeping”.

“Prior to using MyChild Card, I was overwhelmed by the amount of writing and filling in of registers I had to do every day, and the mothers of course had to wait several hours while we did this”, says Mr. Mpagi, the medical records assistant at the health centre. “I feel now that whatever patient information I record will not just sit on a shelf but used to know more about our children and what every family needs for counselling".

The nurse, Nantume Annet Musawo, who can focus on care delivery and seeing more patients per day adds that, “Patients wait less, and our work actually flows better now”.

It is hoped that MyChild Card will serve to strengthen the capacity of frontline health workers to deliver child health services in a more efficient way that reduces their daily workload, and lead to improved quality of the delivery of child health services.