According to health facility statistics, malaria in Tanzania is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality.
The quantitative measures on content, coverage, frequency and duration will be derived from the household and exit surveys and project and health facility statistics.
According to health facility statistics, in Tanzania malaria is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality and accounts for about 30%and15%5% of hospital admissions and deaths, respectively [ 1].
The estimates provided by survey respondents tended to be higher, indicating either that they suspected some under-reporting in the facility statistics, or that the number of PAC cases had increased since the statistics were last recorded.
During the course of the study, additional documents (e.g. health facility statistics, reports from regional authorities, minutes of management committee meetings, mission reports from the Swiss Red Cross, national policies) were collected and analysed.
The information on the above parameters was collected by review of facility statistics, exit poll of up to three caretakers of child patients at each first-level health facility, interview of facility staff, and interview of project managers, pediatricians of referral hospitals, decision/policy makers and some of the UN technical agencies.
We collected monthly routine facility statistics on prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT), follow-up of HIV-exposed infants, and other mother and child health (MCH) activities for the six months before January-June 20099) and 13 months after starting the intervention (July 2009-July 2010).
In facilities where statistics are compiled manually for reporting to higher levels, distinguishing first receipt of each service (e.g. first ANC visit per pregnancy, or first positive HIV test) would avoid double counting (e.g. when patients switch clinics) without the need to search on ID.
In the SPA report, SDM method provision was probably defined as having trained providers at the facility and/or having the method listed in the facility service statistics, without considering actual availability of CycleBeads and other package components.
Two of the variables measuring provider workload, number of facility deliveries and number of outpatient visits, were routine facility service statistics which are often subject to higher missingness and inaccuracy than data collected directly by researchers.
