Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network

Great Editorial Ami. I whole-heartedly agree that strengthening M&E is vital to both programatic success, information sharing, and validating the use of funds.

Having just returned from Uganda and closely observing the work being done to collect data for M/E of a programme directed at chronic disease control (communicable and non-communicable) at district level, I must say that I agree with your statement that we need systems that are comprehensive covering all diseases and programmes. I say this because sadly, calls to track results translate on the ground to thousands of 'new' indicators, many of them overlapping with older ones, sometimes unique to each district, at least in Uganda. I am sure the situation is not much different in other contexts with resource constraints in Africa. Strengthening national health information systems in a systematic manner is very important.