Across the Lake Chad Basin, e-Surve technology is revolutionising the way that the polio programme conducts disease surveillance.
Nine hours away from the nearest large town, Dr Adele Daleke Lisi Aluma speaks to Robert, who manages a small health clinic on an island in the Lake Chad Basin. With paperwork spread around them, she listens carefully as he responds to her questions; Can you tell me how to recognise the symptoms of a potential polio case? Can you show me the records of any measles cases since I last visited?
In the past, she would be writing down details of the disease surveillance system in this village in a notebook, and later spend time typing up her notes, and emailing them to a central database. Today, thanks to the introduction of the electronic surveillance (e-Surve) approach for active surveillance and monitoring of disease outbreaks, as she inputs Robert’s answers directly into an app, allowing for quick, accurate, and up-to-date data collection.
Hundreds of kilometres away in Nigeria, on the other side of the basin, surveillance officer, Dr Namadi Lawal, also feels the difference that innovative application-based technology has made to operations. For years, his employer, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHDA), depended on paper-based recording methods.
When the World Health Organization introduced the e-Surve approach, Dr Namadi discovered he was receiving far more accurate information in real time, thereby making his work to defeat the poliovirus more efficient.
“e-Surve is such a wonderful innovation. I can only imagine how much more accurate data I would have collected in a fast and effective manner if I had adopted this approach long time ago,” he says.
The e-Surve approach involves the use of a smartphone application to ensure that health workers know what symptoms they should be looking for, and how to report suspected cases of vaccine-preventable diseases.
After using the application to guide their conversations with health workers, disease surveillance and notification officers send the results of the questionnaire to a central database, where the data can be analysed and sorted by health district. This is one way to keep track of an outbreak response that covers areas of five different countries, all with their own unique health challenges.
New technology helps to reduce outbreak risk
This innovation is particularly important as when cases of disease are not properly reported, an outbreak can be in full swing before a country even realises that there is a problem.
Active disease surveillance, where officers physically go out to communities to speak to health staff and parents, is proven to increase case detection rates. There are hundreds of these frontline workers spread out across the Lake Chad Basin, each conducting multiple visits every month. Before mobile technology, the outcomes of these visits were cumbersome to track, time consuming to catalogue, and difficult to analyse for a prompt response.
Real-time reporting stems the spread of diseases
In Nigeria, as of May 2018, about 18,840 active surveillance visits to health facilities had been made using e-Surve technology: as a result, over 3000 suspected cases of vaccine-preventable diseases, previously unreported from health facilities, were identified and investigated.
With e-Surve, governments and partners in the polio programme and other health programmes can easily see trends, track data, and take action. This encourages a preventive approach to disease outbreaks rather than a reactive one.
Presented with a dashboard of e-Surve during the recent opening ceremony of the African Regional Certification Commission in Nigeria, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, said “this is a remarkable progress, as it shows where we can actually reach for surveillance.”
Strong support from government
Behind the new technology stands commitment from governments, communities, and partners to close the polio outbreak response. Dr. Sume Gerald at the WHO Nigeria office, states that “e-Surveillance in Nigeria is government-led and driven, supported by WHO.”
Through innovation, determination, and commitment at all levels, those working to end polio are getting ever closer to their goal.
IPAS donates hospital equipment to 29 health facilities in Gombe
In order to reduce maternal mortality in the North-east, IPAS Nigeria Limited has donated hospital equipment to 29 health facilities in Gombe state.
The Country Director of the company, Barrister Hauwa Shekarau, who was represented by Dr. Babatunde Adelekan, Senior Adviser in the organisation disclosed this while presenting the equipment to the state Commissioner of Health, Dr. Ishaya Kennedy in Gombe.
She said that Nigeria contributed significant ratio on maternal morbidity and child mortality in the world.
“Nigeria contributed a lot in the high rate of maternal death, resulting from pregnancy complication in the state and North-east zone at large.
“In view of that, IPAS has seen the need of intervention in the healthcare facilities in the North-east, such as training health workers on capacity building and equipping the facilities to give the health workers chance to deliver good services to the people in the state.
Barr Shakarau said the organization has carried out many interventions in the health care service delivery in the state
She said the organization has trained health workers in building their capacity, adding that they have supplied equipment for the betterment of women and children in the state.
Also speaking, the state Commissioner of Health, Dr. Ishaya Kennedy, said the intervention will reduce the high rate of maternal mortality due to complications resulting from pregnancy in the state.
He urged health managers in the benefitting health facilities to intensify efforts towards ensuring the reduction in maternal death to the barest minimum.
