Introduction

“Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all”.
Charles Babbage (1792-1871)

The national and sub-national HIV databases component is part of the middle ring of the 12 components of a functional HIV M&E system, which deals with the collection, capturing and verification of data needed for the HIV M&E system. It is appropriate that databases be part of this ring, as these can be used to capture the data that have been collected.