Figure 2

Government sector outpatient cases (all diagnoses). Plots show adjusted and unadjusted annual and monthly time series of the mean number of all-cause outpatient cases per facility per month at government health facilities in Kenya during 1996–2004. Unadjusted means were calculated directly from incomplete HMIS data. Adjusted means were based on a geostatistically-completed version of this dataset. Vertical bars on the adjusted annual mean plot show 95% confidence intervals. The provenance and sensitivity of the HMIS data were affirmed by the observations of two marked aberrations in the monthly data: December 1997, a month of industrial action nationwide by nurses, and July 2004 when large publicity surrounded the reduction of user fees at government clinics.