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Health Data Produced through Routine ReportsThere are five levels in the routine reporting of UNRWA's Health Department. The reporting site is where the refugee consults with the health staff, usually at a Health Centre (but also at Health Points and Mother and Child Health (MCH) clinics). Information is passed on from the reporting site to the Area Health Office, the Field Health Office, the Headquarters, and, at international level, WHO.UNRWA operates at present a total of 120 Health Centres in the five Fields. Information produced on this level concerns the condition or diagnosis of the individual patient, as well as the treatment prescribed or given to him/her by the physician. The amount of time available for consultation with each patient is limited at UNRWA's clinics. The heavy workload on the physicians caused by limited resources within UNRWA health system result in short time left for each consultation. Short consultation time might thus affect the reliability of the medical diagnosis.
The information produced in the consultation is written by the physician
on individual cards prepared on the basis of the family's Registration Card.
There is no use of computers on this level. These individual cards are kept
in the Health Centre, and information produced during the consultation is
reported to the Area Health Office only in the form of standardized summary
reports. Reports are submitted to the Area Office and Field Office on weekly,
monthly, quarterly and annual basis, according to the diagnosis in question.
(The routine reports from the reporting sites are listed in Appendix 3.)
With a few exceptions, the data contained in these reports consist of numbers
of new cases. The Field Office in turn passes the reports on to the Headquarters.
Based on these data the Headquarters use the Epi Info24 data entry and statistics
system for epidemiology to provide outputs describing the numbers of cases
for each Health Centre as well as totals for the Fields. 24.) Epi Info is a data entry, data base and statistics system for
epidemiology which is widely used. |
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