Health care for all
Team Fitila, a team consisting of five like-minded people, entered the Data4Governance hackathon with a mind-set of developing a viable product to solve a societal problem. After the key areas to be worked on were unveiled by the organizers, the team opted for a solution in the health sector named Health Care for All. With our vast knowledge of civic engagement and accountability, we blended the product with an advocacy tool to allow citizens to be aware and have the knowledge of health indicators and health facilities in their States. It will also enable the government to make rightful decisions on resource allocation to different health facilities across the country.
The Hackathon ran through 5 days with adequate allocation of resources to the participating teams. On the first day, we were briefed on the expectations from the hackathon. Some other days, experts from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and World Bank spoke to us and shared some additional resource materials such as Geospatial Data Nigeria, Sample Data Visualizations, among others. There were constant follow up by the organizers on what the team was doing and guidance when deviating from the objectives of the hackathon. Another thing that fascinated us was timely communication with the teams whenever there are updates. We have been able to meet new people and make new friends.
In the course of this Data4Governance hackathon, we have been exposed to interactive data visualization in which we took pride in learning to develop our Geo-spatial mapping.
The composition of the team is a data and research analyst, creative designers, a front end designer, and a business developer.
In Nigeria today public services place a major role in the lives of the people, for a country that the level of poverty increases tremendously on an annual basis the need for a lot of quality public services is paramount. Education and Health services are the key needs of the society and which the government needs to channel its investments.
Only a healthy nation can grow an economy. Public services in the health sector in Nigeria is faced with a lot of challenges since independence, although, the health system has evolved with health care reforms such as National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), National Immunisation Coverage Scheme (NICS), Midwives Service Scheme(MSS) and Nigerian Pay for Performance Scheme (P4P) despite all this The Health system of the country is still faced with a lot of challenges. Presently about 70% of Nigerians make use of Private health facilities and only 5% of Nigerians can afford quality health care. On an annual basis, 1.3 million Nigerians are pushed below the poverty line due to health-related issues as only a few can afford health insurance and 90% of Nigerians pay for health care out of their pockets. This is worrisome as the current state of public health care in the country needs critical attention.
According to MICS of 2017 Infant mortality stands at 70 deaths per 1,000 births, under 5 mortality stands at 120 deaths per 1,000 live births, maternal mortality stands at 576 deaths per 100,000 live births. Annually over 7.4 million children are born and only 35% of births in rural areas take place in a health facility. One of the Sustainable development goals is that by 2030 maternal mortality rate will be less than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. To meet up with this goal Nigeria has a lot to do in improving its health care system. The life expectancy of Nigerians is drastically reducing as the life expectancy for males is at 53 years and for females it is 56 years. This life expectancy can be improved with a reliable and quality health care system in the country.
As a team we have deeply dived into part one of the problems that lead to the hackathon which is the visualization of the quantity and quality of public services in Nigeria and how civic engagement and accountability can improve public services delivery.
Nigerians relate with public services on a day-day basis, we believe through intuitive visualization, getting honest feedback on the state of the public services across the country can geometrically improve the quality of public services rendered to the citizens.
For the purpose of the hackathon, we’re focusing on health care in Nigeria, The public health system can be improved upon by being able to rate the health centers and facilities on the ground now and how citizens can engage with the government to improve the system. Having full knowledge of the state of health at sub-national levels is key which is why we have worked on a state in each Geo-political zone, the quantity of public health centers in those states, the different health metric in those states, a ranking to show states that are the most health-conscious and also the quality of those health centers in terms of doctor to patient ratio, availability of drugs, available equipment, laboratories, blood banks, and others. With our visualization citizens are able to rate their experiences at the health centers and give feedback on what could be done to improve the system. The government can through the feedback know the direction of their course of action in regards to health investments.
For this visualization we have made use of data from World bank, Nigerian Bureau of Statistics and United Nation Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF), also some assumed data were used in the visualization. Adobe XD, Adobe animation and Adobe Illustrator have been used to Visualize this concept.
The end goal of this visualization is for the platform to work in real-time. Where all documentation from the public health centers is digitized and citizens can give their review on experiences at a public health center. This enables the citizens to carry out civic engagements and aids the government improves public services in the health sector.
