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Ethiopia has made significant progress in the last two decades in improving the availability and coverage of essential maternal and child health services including childhood immunizations. As Ethiopia keeps momentum towards achieving national immunization goals, methods must be developed to analyze routinely collected health facility data and generate localized coverage estimates. This study leverages the District Health Information Software (DHIS2) platform to estimate immunization coverage for the first dose of measles vaccine (MCV1) and the third dose of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus-Hib-HepB vaccine (Penta3) across Ethiopian districts ("woredas"). Monthly reported numbers of administered MCV1 and Penta3 immunizations were extracted from public facilities from DHIS2 for 2017/2018-2021/2022 and corrected for quality based on completeness and consistency across time and districts. We then utilized three sources for the target population (infants) to compute administrative coverage estimates: Central Statistical Agency, DHIS2, and WorldPop. The Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys were used as benchmarks to which administrative estimates were adjusted at the regional level. Administrative vaccine coverage was estimated for all woredas, and, after adjustments, was bounded within 0-100%. In regions with the highest immunization coverage, MCV1 coverage would range from 83 to 100% and Penta3 coverage from 88 to 100% (Addis Ababa, 2021/2022); MCV1 from 8 to 100% and Penta3 from 4 to 100% (Tigray, 2019/2020). Nationally, the Gini index for MCV1 was 0.37, from 0.13 (Harari) to 0.37 (Somali); for Penta3, it was 0.36, from 0.16 (Harari) to 0.36 (Somali). The use of routine health information systems, such as DHIS2, combined with household surveys permits the generation of local health services coverage estimates. This enables the design of tailored health policies with the capacity to measure progress towards achieving national targets, especially in terms of inequality reductions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Tesfaye et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objective: To explore the feasibility of building a primary care performance dashboard using DHIS2 data from Ethiopia's largest urban (Addis Ababa), agrarian (Oromia) and pastoral (Somali) regions., Methods: We extracted 26 data elements reported by 12 062 health facilities to DHIS2 for the period 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. Focusing on indicators of effectiveness, safety and user experience, we built 14 indicators of primary care performance covering reproductive, maternal and child health, human immunodeficiency virus, tuberculosis, noncommunicable disease care and antibiotic prescription. We assessed data completeness by calculating the proportion of facilities reporting each month, and examined the presence of extreme outliers and assessed external validity., Findings: At the regional level, average completeness across all data elements was highest in Addis Ababa (82.9%), followed by Oromia (66.2%) and Somali (52.6%). Private clinics across regions had low completeness, ranging from 38.6% in Somali to 58.7% in Addis Ababa. We found only a few outliers (334 of 816 578 observations) and noted that external validity was high for 11 of 14 indicators of primary care performance. However, the 12-month antiretroviral treatment retention rate and proportions of patients with controlled diabetes or hypertension exhibited poor external validity., Conclusion: The Ethiopian DHIS2 contains information for measuring primary care performance, using simple analytical methods, at national and regional levels and by facility type. Despite remaining data quality issues, the health management information system is an important data source for generating health system performance assessment measures on a national scale., ((c) 2024 The authors; licensee World Health Organization.)

Declines in health service use during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could have important effects on population health. In this study, we used an interrupted time series design to assess the immediate effect of the pandemic on 31 health services in two low-income (Ethiopia and Haiti), six middle-income (Ghana, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa and Thailand) and high-income (Chile and South Korea) countries. Despite efforts to maintain health services, disruptions of varying magnitude and duration were found in every country, with no clear patterns by country income group or pandemic intensity. Disruptions in health services often preceded COVID-19 waves. Cancer screenings, TB screening and detection and HIV testing were most affected (26-96% declines). Total outpatient visits declined by 9-40% at national levels and remained lower than predicted by the end of 2020. Maternal health services were disrupted in approximately half of the countries, with declines ranging from 5% to 33%. Child vaccinations were disrupted for shorter periods, but we estimate that catch-up campaigns might not have reached all children missed. By contrast, provision of antiretrovirals for HIV was not affected. By the end of 2020, substantial disruptions remained in half of the countries. Preliminary data for 2021 indicate that disruptions likely persisted. Although a portion of the declines observed might result from decreased needs during lockdowns (from fewer infectious illnesses or injuries), a larger share likely reflects a shortfall of health system resilience. Countries must plan to compensate for missed healthcare during the current pandemic and invest in strategies for better health system resilience for future emergencies., (© 2022. The Author(s).)