PESHAWAR, Jan 2: The government is setting up an information communication centre at the provincial level to collect data about the prevalence of diseases and devise a plan to put in place preventive and curative measures, officials said.

The centre to cost Rs193 million would get go-ahead after the meeting of the Provincial Development Working Party slated for Jan 5, they added. The data about various ailments would be updated continuously.

Under the three-year project, information about the staff, medicines, doctors, diseases and investigations etc would be posted on the health department’s website on regular basis. The District Health Information System (DHIS) is being launched in 16 districts to ascertain the number of diseases and send the same to the information communication centre.

“This system is aimed at enhancing the capacity of health workers and improving their performance through the mechanism of punishments and rewards to provide better health facilities to people in public sector hospitals,” the officials said.

A pilot project on the DHIS with the financial support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) had been launched in the Swabi district two years ago with a view to replicate the same in other districts of the province. In the wake of lack of interest by the relevant authorities, the data of the pilot project in Swabi could not be utilised for launching the DHIS in other districts.

“Neither was data supplied nor was the pilot project reviewed. There were several flaws that needed to be removed before its extension to other districts,” they added. The pilot project, they said, had not touched the district headquarters hospital for data collection, which was supposed to cater to 50 per cent of patients in the district.

In the new system, district headquarters hospitals would also supply data to EDOs in the target districts, they added.

The new PC-1 had been prepared after collection of inputs from the districts, they said, adding that the new system would be completed in two phases and initially 12 districts had been selected for launching the programme and the rest of four districts would be included at a later stage.

“We have taken care of the flaws after a thorough survey at the district level. We desperately need a system to know about the quantum of different diseases. At present, no such system exists,” they added.

Primary, secondary and tertiary care facilities at the district level will be linked and data will be uploaded on daily basis

The system after coming into force would be used to collect information about diseases in different areas and seasons and the reasons, and make plans to cope with the situation, the officials said.

The information communication centre to function under the director-general of health services, would also deal with administrative problems, besides evaluation of clinical performance of staff in the health department, they said. They added that all this information would be made available to executive district officers, health, in districts concerned, director-general and the secretary for health.

Specially designed software will be installed in the system through which the EDOs could upload data about their districts that could be seen by top health officials.