With funding from Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) is implementing a programme to enhance health information collection, analysis, and management systems in northern Syria.
Under the Quest Health 2020 initiative, the programme aims to support and empower the health information system of the health directorates and humanitarian organisations operating in the northern parts of the country.
The two-year programme is part of a life-saving medical support project for Syrian women and children.
Another programme of the project involves capacity-building for physicians and healthcare workers.
QRCS said activities include providing technical support to develop the central health information system in northern Syria.
All the organisations that support health centres are invited to take part in the entry processes using a unified system, in co-ordination with the Health Cluster supervised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Turkey, in line with its approved indicators.
QRCS offers technological support through training workshops and courses for the personnel of health directorates.
It also conducts regular maintenance of servers and databases, identifies and resolves issues, and make improvements to ensure optimised use of the resources of the system.
The system issues regular reports on the health conditions in northern Syria, including accurate figures and statistics.
This helps to find out the basic needs of the health system and monitoring and evaluation processes, which are then shared with all partners and concerned parties, with a view to improving medical services and having real indicators to allocate support based on the existing needs.
Launched in April 2020, the project is set to last until May 2022, with the conclusion of personnel training and qualification, completion of infrastructure, and equipment of the unified health system.
It is directly beneficial for the health information system teams working at health directorates, data entry, medical staff at health facilities, and the organisations supervising them.
By extension, the project will reach out to the region’s 4mn population.
The northern parts of Syria host over 4mn locals and displaced people.
There are many health centres and hospitals, but they are controlled by different managements or organisations.
They lack a unified information system that contains and organises all entries in a meaningful way. In response, the health directorates in northern Syria, with support from WHO, started to create a unified health system, in order to improve the health conditions in the region.
