IGHS staff meet at an HIV clinic in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with clinic staff and partners from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and CDC DRC to prepare for a data quality assessment and improvement activity.
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Improving HIV/AIDS Data Quality in the Democratic Republic of Congo

By Leah Rosenbaum, MA, MPH
IGHS staff meet at an HIV clinic in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with clinic staff and partners from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and CDC DRC to prepare for a data quality assessment and improvement activity.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been fighting to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic for decades. Near-constant wars and political violence since the mid-1990s have made it difficult for local and international organizations to carry out HIV/AIDS prevention work in many parts of the country. As of 2023, the country had approximately 520,000 adults and children living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, including 21,000 new infections annually.  

The United States has had longstanding partnerships to strengthen health systems around the world, solidified by the launch of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003. Countries supported by PEPFAR, including DRC, are required to report data, such as trends of newly diagnosed people living with HIV, pregnant women on anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and more. This data is reported by health care workers who often have dozens of patients, have limited access to technology and regularly rely on paper-based records.  

Because of these and other challenges, an implementing partner may be tapped to help public health authorities clean, analyze and interpret the data they’ve collected. In 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approached the UCSF Center for Global Strategic Information and Public Health Practice (CGSIPHP) at IGHS to ask if they could help key stakeholders in DRC with data quality improvement.  

“We came in to give the country tips and tricks on how they could strengthen their data system,” said Nate Smith, MPH, former associate deputy director of programs for CGSIPHP.  

This involved deploying 80 data abstractors to more than 300 health care sites across the country to look at facility data and brainstorm ways to make the data more accurate, reliable and useful to decision-makers.  

Smith said that on the ground in DRC, there was much collaboration from various groups, including UCSF, the Ministry of Health (MOH), the CDC, USAID and the Department of Defense. “The amount of cross-collaboration between stakeholder groups was very impressive and made this program a big success,” he said.  

With CGSIPHP’s guidance and help from an in-country partner called Global Initiative, Research and Development (GIReD), health data systems in DRC were able to improve the reporting and cleanliness of their collected data. CGSIPHP also provided recommendations for best practices for data monitoring and quality improvement in the future. These recommendations will help the country use data to inform policy decisions to help DRC as it moves towards UNAIDS’ 2030 goal of ending the AIDS epidemic.

Banner photo: IGHS staff meet at an HIV clinic in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with clinic staff and partners from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and CDC DRC to prepare for a data quality assessment and improvement activity. Courtesy of GIReD