Malawi has been systematically scaling up KMC services since the intervention was first introduced in 1999. In 2005 KMC for preterm and low-birth-weight (LBW) babies became national policy, and by 2011 KMC was reportedly established in all central- and district-level hospitals as well as several first-level health facilities. However, routine service data were limited and of poor quality due to the lack of a national system of standardized indicators, registers, and reports. A pilot register and monthly report form to track KMC services had been developed, but the tools were difficult to fill in, included more data than was needed for routine reporting, and were not widely available.
Save the Children supported the Malawi Reproductive Health Directorate and Central Monitoring and Evaluation Department (CMED) to develop and pilot a simplified, user-friendly national KMC register and reporting tool designed to generate a set of core indicators for tracking KMC implementation and making clinical and management decisions to improve the quality of KMC services in Malawi. This brief describes the revised indicators and tools and explains the steps taken to develop, pilot, and roll-out a national routine reporting system for facility-based KMC in Malawi. It also shares lesson learned and summarizes next steps.