Central Asia: System Brings Donor, Government Consensus

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, January 30, 2007 — The governments of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan don’t always agree. Nor do the World Bank, Global Fund, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Soros Foundation.

However unlikely, all of these entities have agreed to use the unique identifier code system in Central Asia developed by PSI to track client contacts on its HIV prevention programs.

Major donors and experts around the world agree that successful HIV prevention in concentrated epidemics requires high coverage of high risk populations.

Programs must thus have tools to track coverage of these groups with preventative activities. However, most evaluation tools to measure coverage occur only on an annual or, at best, quarterly basis — too infrequent for real-time feedback for frontline implementation.

To overcome this issue a “Unique Identifier Code” (UIC) and an easy-to-use Microsoft Access database system were developed to track coverage of high risk youth in PSI’s Central Asia program. The system enabled PSI to monitor the number of high risk youth, sex workers, etc. reached, frequency of contact, and without double counting of clients.

The UIC is comprised of a combination of numbers and letters based on gender, birth year and the first two letters of parents' first names. The code is convenient for use with high risk groups such as IDUs and SWs because:

• it’s anonymous (i.e. no information in the code is easily associated with the client);
• it’s easy for outreach workers to collect as it’s comprised of a limited amount of data;
• it has a less than 2% repetition rate, as confirmed through mathematical modeling.

Whenever a high risk group member has contact with the program, the client’s code and type of contact is entered into the database. The inputting process is easy and takes just seconds per client and the benefits are extraordinary. Information in the database allows program staff to see the total number of clients being contacted and regularity of contact.

PSI’s UIC is an attractive alternative to the post-Soviet system of registering drug users and those carrying sexually transmitted infections (STI) by their full names and passport information. It created a stigma and consequently had very low coverage.

A diverse array of major donors, international organizations working on HIV and the governments in the region have adopted PSI’s UIC system. It has enabled PSI to model for donors and governmental partners how to track and reach high coverage of various target groups.

— Leah Hoffman, PSI/Central Asia

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A client fills out contact information for entry into PSI’s client contact database.