Community Scorecard, a successful approach to improve on service provision

The community scorecard (CSC) has been conceived as an approach to increase the accountability and responsiveness of service providers, which also contributes to evidence-based advocacy.

In Nyamagabe District, especially rural communities are facing different issues such as Noncommunicable and chronic diseases ; limited access to quality health care, Insufficient of health insurance coverage ; Geographic isolation, difficult transportation means ; Poor infrastructures ; Low educational attainment, unclean water, and limited electricity connectivity among others.
some of these obstacles can be handled by the people themselves with or without government support ; it’s a matter of being accountable and making deep problem analysis so that the collaboration and synergy of different people/institutions are considered to find a desirable solution. As Explained by Jean Bayiringiye (in the picture), the Executive Secretary of the Buruhukiro sector in Nyamagabe district, is one of the local leaders who embraced this approach to finding solutions to solve some issues faced by his community. He testified how the CSC approach helped them to improve services whereby the service users and providers get satisfied at the same time.

Buruhukiro Health Center used to provide insufficient medical services as, the data collected from the patients negatively highlighted the insufficiency and ineffectiveness of the services offered by the health Center. After conducting CSC, the Executive secretary with his team committed to improving the health center services.

28% of Buruhukiro Sector citizens are served that health center, and by calculation, one nurse receives or is supposed to treat 5 000 to 6000 patients monthly ! From these statistics, people got to understand that the issue is neither the negligence of nurses nor the bad service delivery but the insufficiency of nurse numbers.
After the analysis done on 30th October 2022 with social affairs and other sector leaders, CNF, CNJ, and health center staff and citizens :” We as a community, engaged the HC head in order to find the lasting solution. The outcome from this process, they hired 2 additional Medical Laboratory Scientists and 2 nurses who are available now to support.” Said Jean.
The executive secretary added that they are enjoying the following benefits from this approach :

  There is ownership ; community members are working closely with their leaders to find solutions to different problems and own the consequences of their actions/decisions.

  Citizens get knowledge and skills to make an Advocacy for their issues themselves

  The service providers feel more accountable and push to find sustainable and impactful solutions in partnership with the citizen.

The ES added that the CSC approach is helping them in the fight against teenage pregnancies and polygamy as they found it as a face-to-face solution provider ;
“Before this best practice comes in, there was no citizen-centered communication channel, which led to lack of feedback from citizen, no ownership from citizen, etc. but I have found that the CSC is a better way to remind the service providers about their responsibilities and to involve citizens in decision making processes and finding solutions to community emerging issues” said ES.