The Department of Health organised a Health Information System workshop training for the healthcare workers and nurses of 12 settlements of Nepal, including the remote Tibetan settlements of Nepal, from 14-17 July 2015 at Hotel Tibet in Dharamshala.

The objective of the training was to build efficient capacity of health care workers and staffs of the health clinics of Tibetan settlements in Nepal to build a robust, reliable and efficient health information system for health data collection. The processes taught were how to collect health information on paper forms as well as on the health information system software developed by the department. The topics covered include introduction to the principles of data collection and health information system, making basic disease diagnoses by the health care workers, understanding and reporting notifiable diseases, data collection on paper registers as well as computer software and the processes to send the collected data for analyses and dissemination of information to the stakeholders.

The expected outcome of the training is that the staffs be efficiently trained to collect reliable correct health data by making correct basic diagnoses and thereby help the department of health in conducting efficient health surveillance and properly manage infectious as well as non-communicable diseases of particular interests to the Tibetans, and thereby analyse the health status of the Tibetan population as a whole.

The opening and the closing ceremony were graced by the presence of the honorable Health Kalon and the Health Secretary who talked in detail about the importance of health data collection and analyses for formulation of important health policies at the administrative level. The training was given by the department’s Health Information System and Public Health Program Coordinator Tenzin Tseyang and Dr. Lobsang Tsering.

The workshop was funded by the USAID through the Tibet Fund.