Mapping availability of HIV, AIDS and TB services in Kenya

How can policymakers identify gaps in the delivery of HIV, AIDS and TB services at the community level?
How can communities provide feedback to policymakers on availability and quality of services in their area?
How can communities affected by AIDS be referred to appropriate local services?

The information needed to answer these important questions is mostly already available, just not easily accessible. A new AIDSPortal project seeks to make it easier to answer these and other questions by publishing data on location and type of HIV services for Kenya on a Google map.

The project is a partnership with the Kenyan AIDS NGOs Consortium (KANCO) and Ushahidi and receives funding from the Google.org Fund at the Tides Foundation .

It will adapt the platform developed by Ushahidi for crowd sourcing crisis information to enable the publication of data on the coverage of HIV, AIDS and TB services across Africa. Outcomes from this work will be:

• A way for organisations to publish and maintain interactive data relating to public, non-governmental organisation (NGO) and community based organization (CBO) service provision
• More widespread, accessible and, up to date visual information and supportive material, such as contact details, for policy makers, planners and professionals

This map will allow policy makers, practitioners and advocates to identify gaps in services and improve referrals for people living with HIV or AIDS.

Some of the questions we seek to answer during this project include:

• Is it more cost effective for a network with pre-existing linkages with service providers to collect data on service availability?
• Does this approach result in reliable and accurate data?
• What incentives are need to encourage service providers to update their own data?
• What is the most appropriate way to make this data accessible to different audiences (communities affected by AIDS, service providers, policymakers and donors)?

Please leave a comment below or contact us if you would like to know more. For information on other organisations funded through the Geo Challenge Grant see the following link. Official google.org Blog: Announcing 14 Geo Challenge Grant Recipients