The Union Zimbabwe Office delivered a postgraduate course for the first time at the 46th Union World Lung Conference on Lung Health in Cape Town, South Africa. The course introduced a user-friendly, step-by-step guide for healthcare workers on the collection, analysis and use of routine TB data at all levels of the healthcare system. The guide was developed by The Union Zimbabwe Office in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the World Health Organization.
The postgraduate course focused on data tabulation and interpretation using practical examples from Zimbabwe. Data-driven supportive supervision using a standardised checklist was discussed, as well as the benefits of routinely collected TB surveillance data. Key outcomes from implementing the guide in Zimbabwe have been a clear improvement in the data management capacity at the primary healthcare level and an increased use of TB data for decisionmaking.
Feedback on the course was very positive, and several participants in the course expressed keen interest in adapting the guide to their local contexts.