PHR project trained health employees on Geographical Information System

Yemen Partners for Health Reforms (PHR) project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is training a group of decision makers in the Health Ministry Bureau, launched a course to target provinces that are instructed in the use the Geographical Information System (GIS) in order to map the health medical centers in all Yemen’s provinces. 

The training course will continue for one month to instruct health employees about the process of updating the data that they use during their work. The course contains three decision makers and two updating data trainers for each province. The project is training a group of government employees from the five targeted provinces of the project that are Marib, Amran, Shabwa, al-Jawf and Sa’ada and the Health Ministry will train the 16 other provinces.

The system aims to report the health situation in all the country’s provinces in order to improve health conditions among people. It also shows the health data to the donors if they want to rehabilitate or establish health centers in any area that needs them.

The PHR project collected health data from the five targeted provinces whilst the Health Ministry gathered the other information from the 16 provinces and put them together inside this program.

The system contains all health centers and hospital in Yemen’s provinces and it has all the data needed for the equipment of these health centers, such as the health officials, the geographical location and what it has and lacks in terms of services.

The decision makers in the Health Ministry and its bureau in all provinces are expected to thus make the right decisions thanks to the information they can easily get from this system.

“This system needs to be used because it can be operated around the country and thus it can benefit the people at large,” said Amar Ali Sabbar, trainer’s trainer.    

Amar al-Maghrebi, a trainee and general director of the Health Office in Amran province said that he benefited from updating the data related to health. He added that the PHR trained them on how to collect and update the health data and how to use the new third version of the system. 

Abeer al-Faqeeh, a trainee updating health data and who also currently works at the Health office in Amran province said that the course was very useful to her. 

“We benefited from how the decision makers can get a lot of health information and how they can help in taking good decisions to improve the health situation in Yemen,” said al-Faqeeh. The system can show the medical headquarters and hospitals in all the country.

Al-Maghrebi confirmed that the course is also improving the health work inside the government health offices around the country. “After we take the course, we will prolong the work on this system and we will continue updating the data for we will also train employees from our office in Amran,” he added.

“Some areas have two health centers but lack health services and equipments. With the information obtained from this system decision makers can try to provide what each area needs in terms of health services to benefit people,” he added. 

“This system will benefit the health sector in all governorates and enhance the abilities of health centers services, clarifying the lacks inside these centers,” said Abdullah Belaym, Manager of Researches and Information Administration at the Health Office in Marib province. 

Abdul Salam al-Kohlani, manager of PHR project, said that “although we have demands for more than 180 people in the targeted provinces of the project, specific people specialized in information analyses, in addition to a group of trainers who train the participants in the course.”

“The system can take important information from the medical centers, take photographs by cameras and thus determine the location. We take all these operations and put them inside the GIS system,” al-Kohlani explained.

“For the guarantee of the system’s continuation,” he said, “we trained people providing computers for the updating of the data and digital cameras.” 

He concluded by explaining that “if you want to provide the service in the right way, you must have the right information.”     

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