Data collection for prevention
Improving surveillance and access to data has been critical to The Bahamas’ EMTCT success, enabling health workers to better track and support pregnant women living with HIV across the continuum of care, and providing decision-makers with the information needed to identify gaps, guide interventions, and ensure the timely procurement of diagnostics and treatment.
“HIV is a reportable condition in the Bahamas,” explains Glenise Johnson, epidemiologist with The Bahamas’ Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW). “And identifying women who tested positive, is one of our first lines of defense for preventing mother-to-child transmission.”
For Brenée Wallace, a data analyst in the MoHW surveillance unit, one of the biggest challenges was data fragmentation. “Data was not readily available in one centralized space. Clinical data was in this book and that book, and then we would have to retroactively look for years,” she explains.
In response, teams across the public and private sectors worked together to consolidate information, validate records, and create a centralized platform that could track cases from diagnosis through pregnancy, delivery, and beyond.
This shift changed how institutions worked together. “Previously everyone was kind of operating in a silo,” Wallace notes. “But this project has forced us to realize that we have to talk to each other and share that information.”
New protocols, standardized reporting, and joint data systems have now connected clinics, laboratories, and national programs, ensuring that test results, treatment, and pregnancies are accounted for. This, combined with coordinated partnership and universal access to free antenatal care and treatment, removed critical barriers.
“Providing care and medication for the treatment of HIV at no cost to patients, especially pregnant women, has been invaluable to The Bahamas and removes the need for women to choose between other expenses and seeking care,” explains Phillip Swann, health information systems lead at the MoHW.