Participants of the second meeting of the Steering Committee on March 1st, 2023.
In the first quarter of 2023, Muso, the Malian government, and other key stakeholders reunited for the second meeting of the National Steering Committee for Community Case Management (CCM). This steering committee plays an important role in Mali’s community health landscape — it is through this multi-sector group of partners that national policies and guidelines are drafted and validated and that Muso has been able to leverage evidence from our sites into actionable systems change. During this meeting, members discussed a new communication strategy for CCM, ongoing resource mobilization efforts, building systems for accountability in the health sector, and the exciting launch of a new digital information system for community health workers (CHWs) — DISC-MALI.
The Digitalization of Community Health
The Committee reported on an important development: the launch of a new community health information system — DISC-Mali. An official ceremony was held in central Mali (Segou) on March 9 to mark the roll out of this new digital tool, based on the Community Health Toolkit (CHT) and designed to support CHWs and frontline health providers across Mali with their day-to-day patient care. The Malian government plans for DISC-Mali to reach national scale by 2025, ultimately reaching more that 25,000 health workers.
Muso’s long-standing partner Medic, developer of the CHT, was identified by Mali’s government to lead the customization and implementation of the CHT for the Malian health system. In collaboration with key stakeholders, Medic is providing training, ongoing maintenance, and technical support to roll out DISC-Mali in accordance with the national strategic plan on digital health. Muso has supported the development and deployment of DISC-Mali, providing technical and financial assistance for application development workshops, leading training of trainers and the nearly 4,000 CHWs across Mali who will be the primary users of this tool.
DISC-Mali will serve as a job aid to CHWs in Mali, facilitating patient care, supply management, and improving data collection on key indicators including the number of home visits, treatment provided, and number of tests performed. Until now, these CHWs completed their activity reports on paper, submitting them to health centers to be manually entered into the national DHIS2 database. Using DISC-Mali, CHWs can now record patient data directly onto a smartphone-based application, and submit their reports in real-time.
From left to right: Cheick Amadou Tidiane Traoré (Director General of Health), Dr. Coulibaly Youma Sall (Representative of the Ministry of Health), Rashidi Amboko (UNICEF Community Health Specialist), and Dr. Djoumé Diakité (Muso Country Director Mali).
Despite a complex political and security context in recent years, Mali has achieved considerable progress in the complete digitalization of community health. Muso will continue to support our government partners to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) for all.
Members of Muso's leadership team attend the launch of DISC-Mali in Segou on March 9th, 2023.
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