Information systems for monitoring the burden of chronic diseases in public reference health facilities in Rwanda; Burundi and Eastern DRC

ABSTRACT

Chronic diseases are an increasingly important cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. Diseases such as cancer; diabetes and arterial hypertension remained for years in the background; in the shadow of pandemics such as malaria; HIV / AIDS and tuberculosis. In the past 6 years; 4 reference hospitals of Kisangani; Bukavu; Kigali and Bujumbura implemented hospital information systems enabling sophisticated analysis of the diagnostic variance of out-patient visits and in-patient admissions. Important volumes of chronic disease data have been collected in a period between 2006 and 2012; demonstrating that the problem of chronic diseases also grows rapidly in the Great Lakes region and therefore urgent steps must be taken; both by governments (Rwanda; DRC and Burundi); by the international donor community and by local hospital boards