A Trial of an Integrated E-diagnosis Assessment to Improve the Management of Childhood Illnesses in Burkina Faso

In 2010, one in six children in Burkina Faso died before the age of five, mainly due to lack of access to quality health care services. Most of these deaths could have been avoided through cost-effective interventions. Ensuring that sick children receive adequate care in a country where 80% of the population lives in rural areas requires improved accessibility and high quality primary health care services. The Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses strategy (IMCI) was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in the 1990s and is an excellent way to improve the quality of country's child health services. However, in Burkina Faso IMCI suffers from a low level of adherence by health workers. According to a recent evaluation by the Ministry of Health (MoH), only 8.2% of children had benefited in 2012 from an consultation using IMCI guideline. Moreover, an analysis of children's records showed that only 15% of IMCI consultations were being correctly delivered and, for instance, only 34% of children with pneumonia who needed an antibiotic were prescribed the correct treatment. The obstacles to IMCI adoption in Burkina Faso are diverse and include inadequate training methods, shortage of material (papers, forms), lack of quality supervision by district executive teams, lack of integration between IMCI monitoring tools and the national health information system etc.

The Integrated eDiagnosis Approach (IeDA) aims to address the poor quality of child health services in Burkina Faso by increasing the level of adherence to IMCI guidelines. IeDA is an innovative strategy combining information and communication technologies (using the Registre Electronique des Consultations [REC], an electronic IMCI patient record designed by Terre des hommes, Tdh) and a quality improvement approach. The approach has been piloted over three years in two different districts in the north of Burkina Faso, Tougan and Séguénéga. This medium scaling-up demonstration project will combine implementation and research components with a goal to enable national scaleup.

Terre des hommes is in charge of the implementation of the project and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) will coordinate the research component of the study in partnership with Centre Muraz.

The primary hypothesis is that the Integrated eDiagnosis Approach will lead to improved adherence to IMCI guidelines and management of childhood illnesses in two regions (with a target of 75% of correct diagnoses and prescriptions).