Master Facility List

The end of my first week at work has been extremely exciting.  After a tour of the office on Monday morning (followed by some jet lag naps at my desk), MEDA asked me to attend a 3 day conference put on by the Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.  The goal of the conference was to outline the technical requirements in developing an online registry of all the health facilities in the country.  A number of stakeholders were contacted and about 25 people attended to give their input on what was required from the "Master Facility List".  I felt very privileged having a front row seat to watch the beginning stages of what I feel is a very significant project.  It would be so useful for Tanzania to have a centralized and reliable list of hospitals with their provided services. And to make the information available to other health projects and to the general public, well that would just be a great thing.  Mostly I sat back and enjoyed the experience, letting the more experienced members discuss what shape the project should take.  However I did get a chance to chip in when I noticed some flaws in the chosen database constraints.  And boy was my heart pounding when I said my piece.  After being understood, I promptly sat down and returned to my more comfortable role of observing.