Addis Ababa, October 2022 –The District Health Information System, software version 2 (DHIS2) training is ongoing in 507 woredas of Ethiopia to reach a total of 1,553 participants in 58 sessions. The training aims to digitalize and improve the collection, quality and use of COVID-19 vaccination data. 

WHO is currently supporting this training technically and financially since July 2022 to cover 51% of the total woredas in seven regions namely Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Somali, SNNP, South-West Ethiopia Peoples, Afar and Oromia, and the remaining 49% woredas were trained earlier by Ministry of health and other partners. The trainees were drawn from the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and health management information system (HMIS) units of the woredas. 
So far, six regions SNNP, South-West Ethiopia Peoples, Benshangul Gumuz, Oromia, Amhara and Afar completed the training and the remaining Somali region training is scheduled to be conducted from October 17 – 20, 2022.

The COVID-19 vaccination data collection has been integrated in the DHIS2 platform since 2021 to capture tracker and aggregate data and to manage Ethiopia’s electronic vaccination registry. The system includes a digital certificate component that allows for the generation of vaccine certificates for travellers. The training has improved the digitalization and quality of COVID-19 vaccination data and enable every woreda for better data use and performance monitoring. Besides, it will help the system to avoid parallel reporting of COVID-19 vaccination data through google sheet which was used as a temporary means and improved the data discrepancy observed among the two platforms. 
 
The training was provided in the recognized universities and colleges in the respective regions with standard and well facilitated computer laboratories having strong internet connectivity. As the training was practical, the number of trainees for each session was limited to 25 - 30 as standard to make the individual based coaching more suitable. The trainers were experts of DHIS2 from FMOH and respective regional health bureaus who had received COVAC DHIS2 TOT and had an experience of providing the training during the first-round implementation by the FMOH.

DHIS2 has become the world's largest health-information management system, used by 73 low- and middle-income countries in 2022. Ethiopia is one of these countries that adopted DHIS2 as its nationwide health information system platform.

Ethiopia first began implementation of DHIS2 as their Health Management Information System (HMIS) in 2016, and achieved implementation at national scale in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

The Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) shifted from HMIS to DHIS2 aiming towards integration of data from different regions which enable to conduct data use and analysis at all levels of the health sector by harmonizing upstream data collection as well as downstream reporting. The training is made possible by the generous support of United States Department of State (USDOS)