Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) in Gambia

Areas eligible for SMC and areas where SMC is implemented

Administrative coverage

Administrative coverage based on the number of courses administered was tallied daily from each distribution team and aggregated by district and then Regional level.
Reports from health posts and delivery tools developed to document day to day activities of drug delivery teams were collected and compared with registers to check for consistency

Full SMC coverage

Full SMC coverage was based on the as the proportion of children aged 3-59 months who received the required complete 3-day treatment course during the SMC round from the complete clean synced data from the commCare platform

There was real time SMC data collection using the DHIS2 tracker.
Data quality checks were done daily i.e. as soon as data collectors sync their data.
The data was analyzed at the end of each day, this helped to identify the areas that were not reached and whether all the children were reached compared to the previous cycle.
Audit trails were available to identify data collectors who were doing wrong data collection to rectify data and for mentoring and coaching.

There were some design issues that were detected during the implementation stage e.g. The data element was child treated should have been an end product based on the answer to the previous question.
Some children’s previous cycle record didn’t appear on some devices which we suspect is due to the level of the org unit the form was assigned to.
Inadequate data quality auditors because it was the four central level supervisors who were doing the data quality checks.
The app showing false errors in drugs reconciliation.
There are no boundaries layer (no shape file) in maps.
Wrong coordinates seen in maps.
Certain data elements should be end products instead of input fields e.g., “was child treated” and “remaining balance” in drugs reconciliation.

Additional messages on safe delivery of SMC medicine in the context of COVID-19 conducted in radios and community level.
The NMCP should mobilize additional funds to strengthen social and behavioural change communication at the community level
Regional teams should visit communities with high refusal rates to sensitize influential leaders on the benefits of SMC to increase their acceptance rate
Regional health divisions are encouraged to ensure joint daily team movement planning together with the community members
All malicious audio messages intercepted on WhatsApp were addressed as a matter of urgency and forwarded to WhatsApp groups with a telephone number for further clarification.
CRS and NMCP to meet and evaluate the DHIS2 pilot and determine if its use should be scaled up to other regions during the 2022 SMC campaign.

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