Bangladesh assesses the needed steps for introducing WHO technical package SCORE- Survey, Count, Optimize, Review and Enable as a tool for measuring Bangladesh’s progress and status towards achieving targets of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
In this regard, Management Information System (MIS) of Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) organized a consultation with health partners to analyze ways to advance in using SCORE for strengthen the country’s health data systems.
Accurate and timely data are critical for tracking progress, optimizing interventions and measuring impact of population health. For addressing this need, SCORE has been developed by WHO as a technical package of essential interventions, recommended actions, tools, and resources that aim to support countries in addressing challenges in meeting health information system needs.
During the consultation, critical resource gaps and mechanisms for leveraging the country to adopt the package as an instrument were identified. Participants in the event recommended the development of an action plan to steer the initiative, prioritizing the harmonization across different platform of data sources and institutes for monitoring of various health indicators including population survey, births and deaths registration and causes of death.
The consultation was attended by data managers from Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, Expanded Programme of Immunization, Leprosy Programme, Community Based Health Care, National Nutrition Services, Planning, Monitoring and Research and officials from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Directorate General of Family Planning, CRVS Secretariat, United Nations Population Fund, Management Science for Health, Bangladesh University of Health Science, Vital Strategies-Bloomberg Philanthropies and MEASURE evaluation.
WHO will continue its support for strengthening MIS and steering the SCORE initiative through collaboration with relevant stakeholders, health partners and development agencies for advancing towards achievement of SDGs and UHC.