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Kenya

Antiretroviral Therapy Information System (ARTIS)

In many developing countries, patient tracking systems in hospitals are underdeveloped. The data collection and reporting systems in hospitals often times do not exist or do not function optimally. Generally this problem is more pronounced in bigger institutions than in the smaller institutions. With the scale up of HIV/AIDS programs, health care facilities now need to strengthen their patient tracking for HIV/AIDS services such as antiretroviral therapy (ART), prevention of mother-to-child transmission, and voluntary counseling and testing. ARTIS was designed to track individual patients receiving ART, so as to provide more personalized care. The application of ARTIS covers: patient enrollment, assessment, recruitment, management, and treatment outcomes.

ARTIS has been implemented in Zambia and Kenya. The system was implemented in ten pilot facilities providing ART in each country. The Pre-ART and ART registers, Comprehensive Care Clinic Card, Monthly Summary Sheet, and Cohort Sheet were developed to fit each of the individual country’s health care systems, health services, and reporting needs. Once developed, the hospital staff from the pilot sites were trained in ARTIS and the system was installed at the facilities. Implementation of ARTIS in both Zambia and Kenya continues.

National Health Accounts

Health Systems 20/20 is supporting the Kenyan Ministry of Health in its third round of National Health Accounts (NHA), which aims to track national resource flows for health care overall, HIV/AIDS, and reproductive health for the fiscal year 2005/06. This information will be used to inform the official health care financing strategy of the government and to help assess the impact of recent policies aimed at addressing inequities. The estimation process entails the collection of data from a number of sources, both primary and secondary. Primary collection efforts will include the implementation of a general household health expenditure and utilization survey as well as questionnaires targeted for donors, nongovernmental organizations, employers, and insurance schemes. Results are expected by early 2008.

Read more about Health Systems 20/20 and NHA.