Validation of the Vitamin A Supplementation Data Reported Under Health Management Information System by the Primary Health Centres of Rural Vadodara

Abstract

 The present study was conducted to study the Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) data reported by primary health centre/subcentre (PHC/SC) and validate them at the village level and assess quality of care during VAS. A sample of 20 PHCs, 13 rural and seven tribal, was selected using stratified random sampling. For every PHC, two SCs and for every SC, one village were selected. Data on VAS were collected from the PHC/ SC records and validated by interviewing five beneficiaries from the village. Process evaluation of VAS was done wherever possible to assess the quality of care. The district availability of Vitamin A was 62.4% while the overall accessibility was 90%. The coverage for the district based on the reported data, was estimated to be 61.7%. Since 80% of reported data could be validated, the adjusted coverage was estimated to be 49.3%. Process evaluation revealed that the process was followed correctly at 45.8% as per assessment score while only a part of this gap between the reported and validated data could be accounted for by the reasons justified by the service providers, a substantial part of it may be chiefly due to over reporting mainly to meet the dictated targets.

Keywords: HMIS, Data Validation, Vitamin A, Primary Health Centre