This is the blog for Rhona and Bobby Hogg's VSO experience in Uganda. In August 2008 we applied to do VSO and, following an assessment day in London last October, we were accepted as volunteers . Because of the strong Scottish links, we had set our sights originally on Malawi where we spent a week in June 2008 but joint placements are difficult to find and in February we agreed with VSO to open up the search. At the end of March we were delighted to be offered placements in Kampala, Uganda. We are to work for a HIV and AIDS initiative called Reach Out Mbuya (http://www.reachoutmbuya.org/) where, we hope, Rhona's community nursing experience and Bobby's IT experience will prove useful.

We are due in Kampala on 18th September and have committed to spend a year there. We are very excited about the prospect of living in a very different part of the world and working with Ugandans who, from many reports, are fun to be with. We expect there to be many challenges but our stay in Uganda should be immensely enjoyable.

We are indebted to VSO for giving us this opportunity. Our preparation, including 2 training courses in Birmingham, has been excellent and we are confident about the in-country support that we will get from VSO in Uganda. I understand that it costs VSO around £15,000 to support each volunteer. If you would like to make a donation to support our placements in Uganda please visit the Just Giving site through the link opposite.

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

My VSO Placement


Bobby - 16th March 2010

This is probably the most boring blog so far (no photos but I thought some flowcharts might be helpful) but being 6 months through our 1 year placement I thought I should record a bit more about the work I am doing. I am enjoying my placement and feel very lucky that there is a substantial job to be done.

I am working for (as is Rhona) Reach Out Mbuya HIV and AIDS Initiative. It started in 2001 with less than 20 clients and now has around 3,000. Since its start over 7,000 clients have been registered. Mbuya is a parish on the east side of Kampala on the Port Bell Road. Our house is about 3km further out on the Port Bell Road which  makes travelling to work relatively easy.
Reach Out is required to make regular reports to the Ministry of Health and funders. As the organisation grew the reporting depended more and more on spreadsheets and at some point it was realised that there would be benefits from establishing a Health Management Information System (HMIS) which would capture data from day to  day and generate the analyses for the required internal and external reporting.
In February 2009 Reach Out engaged a consultant/contractor to provide the HMIS using an MS SQL Server database and Visual Basic front end for the data capture. The contract was for 2 months starting  February 2009. When I arrived on the scene at the end of September 2 data capture screens (out of around 20) were in use.  The consultant was claiming that the system was substantially complete but Reach Out had not tested or implemented most of what had been delivered. This was not surprising as I discovered the only database established was the one Reach Out was using to key the live data into  - there was no test system. The system had been described/specified as a number of modules e.g. pharmacy, laboratory, medical (including Follow Up records, TB register, PMTCT register), stores, so I set about identifying all the issues/bugs which required to be addressed. I spent the 3 months up to Christmas working with the consultant trying to get him to fix the problems and address some of the other issues.
I think the basic problem was the specification was very loose and the consultant didn’t seem to be keen to do much analyses so in many cases what was delivered did not meet the requirements and there was little detail on what they were.
I had no previous experience of MS SQL Server but, when I established the test system, I was delighted to discover how easy it was to take an MS Access database and convert it into a front end for the MS SQL Server database. Importing the MS Access tables worked a treat and MS Access ODBC links were easily established. Around 70,000 Follow Up  records had been entered and MS Access link tables allowed us to start checking and using the data for the reports at the end of December. (A number of staff at Reach Out have some knowledge of MS Access)
Reach Out are trying to capture all the historical records going back to the start in 2001. As the data capture was way behind schedule and the consultant was “slow” in delivering I suggested as an interim measure that I create an MS Access database to capture the TB Register data. When the consultant delivered the VB screens we could convert to using them.
Christmas came and went and I was getting concerned at the amount of time I was wasting checking each delivered offering from the consultant only to find that a substantial number of the outstanding issues were not addressed and had to be followed up in the next delivery.
In January we had a meeting with some of the IT staff from CDC, Reach Out’s main sponsor, and I was very interested to hear that they were encouraging the use of MS Access as a front end to MS SQL Server as it gave the (more competent) users the option to change the data capture and add new fields to meet changing needs without having to further engage the services of a consultant.
A short step from that was the realisation that the time I was wasting with the consultant would be better spent developing MS Access front ends to the HMIS database. So we have abandonned any further development of the VB modules and I am now developing the HMIS system. I am enjoying this although my lack of experience with MS SQL Server can be a bit of a constraint.
I have had concerns that I wasn’t passing on skills to the staff but it’s not too bad just now with a few keen to learn from me.
I have a clear idea what I want to achieve in the next 2 months so that the last 4 months will just be consolidating the procedures and training – if only. There are signs of the next phase of requirements emerging but I will have to try not to get to involved or else I will never get home.
What do you think? Is this really boring? Please comment.
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1 comment:

  1. Peter CS19 March 2010 at 23:10

    Hello Bobby - I have been reading your blog for months but now you've got the interesting bit I thought I'd respond.

    Yes, Access plus SQL Server is a reasonably good combination. It does tend to run out of steam if you have too many users, but on the plus side, developing a good user interface and 'pretty' reports is relatively easy.

    My own preference for rapid development of a database with a good user interface is LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl (or PHP). All of those technologies are free, and run quite fast on even a 5-year old PC. The web front end is not quite as flexible as Access, but Access is quite expensive, at least in the UK. You can also use A, M and P on a Windows platform, though there is little advantage in doing so.

    Just last week I replaced a 500 line Java class that took 7 hours to run, with a Perl script that imports 500 000 records into a database in 2 minutes. That's an extreme example of course.

    Anyway I enjoy reading the blog and hope you are both keeping well and busy.

    Peter CS

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