The theme of Malezi Bora for the Month of May 2011 was "Improving the Healthy Mothers and the New Born Babies".Health workers at the National level led by Mr. Benard wambu the M&E Programme officer at the Division of Division of Adoloscence and Child Health used EpiSurveyor to monitor the critical indicators in the field.The officers were assigned to all the provinces of Kenya to collect data from the clients and the health workers in the field.

 Malezi Bora (Child Week campaign) was held this week, and was able to attend and hear the data collectors' views of EpiSurveyor phone client. This is after they had the opportunity to use it on the field for up to two weeks. This was a great opportunity to hear from the users themselves as a developer/tester what they really felt about EpiSurveyor.

In Kenya within the Ministry of Health cycle, Malezi Bora Team became the first team in the country to collect data using Nokia 6300 during the Field support supervision (4th May to 13 June,2009) done by the National level. National level teams were drawn from various divisions within the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, UNICEF and Micro Nutrient Initiative. Techinical support was provided by the In-country Data dyne staffs.

Today marks the end of the Malezi Bora weeks in Kenya. Malezi Bora is a effort by the Kenyan Government to encourage health care providers to focus on the health and welfare of the mothers and children that visit their facilities. While not a full-fledged campaign, health care providers focus on making sure that mothers and pregnant women who visit the health facilities get specifically targeted health messages about breast-feeding, immunizations, malaria and other relevant topics.

I had the pleasure last week of spending a few days with Bernard Wambu (pictured) of the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (the MOH in Kenya is split into a public health part and a clinical medicine part) in the areas around Nakuru, Kenya. Bernard was one of the public health officers using the mobile phone version of EpiSurveyor to conduct exit interviews of moms attending the Malezi Bora (child health) week, which happens twice a year in Kenya as a project of the ministry and UNICEF.

Well, the Malezi Bora ("child health") week training and implementation starts tomorrow here in Nairobi at the Ministry of Health.  The activity, which involves a whole host of child health interventions, including vaccination, deworming, bednet distribution, and others, is extensively monitored and evaluated by the Ministry.

Kenya's Division of Child Health will be Using EpiSurveyor for Data collection purposes in the Survey to be carried out  between 4th and 15th / 05/2009. I instructed a team of 13 National Logisticians during a two day training (pictured) on how to collect data Using both PDAs and the new EpiSurveyor Cellphone Version.