scholarly journals Electronic reporting of integrated disease surveillance and response: lessons learned from northeast, Nigeria, 2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luka Mangveep Ibrahim ◽  
Ifeanyi Okudo ◽  
Mary Stephen ◽  
Opeayo Ogundiran ◽  
Jerry Shitta Pantuvo ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Electronic reporting of integrated disease surveillance and response (eIDSR) was implemented in Adamawa and Yobe states, Northeastern Nigeria, as an innovative strategy to improve disease reporting. Its objectives were to improve the timeliness and completeness of IDSR reporting by health facilities, prompt identification of public health events, timely information sharing, and public health action. We evaluated the project to determine whether it met its set objectives. Method We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess and document the lessons learned from the project. We reviewed the performance of the local government areas (LGAs) on timeliness and completeness of reporting, rumors identification, and reporting on the eIDSR and the traditional paper-based system using a checklist. Respondents were interviewed online on the relevance, efficiency, sustainability, project progress and effectiveness, the effectiveness of management, and potential impact and scalability of the strategy using structured questionnaires. Data were cleaned, analyzed, and presented as proportions using an MS Excel spreadsheet. Responses were also presented as direct quotes. Results The number of health facilities reporting IDSR increased from 103 to 228 (117%) before and after implementation of the eIDSR respectively. The timeliness of reporting was 43% in the LGA compared to 73% in health facilities implementing eIDSR. The completeness of IDSR reports in the last 6 months before the evaluation was ≥85%. Of the 201 rumors identified and verified, 161 (80%) were from the eIDSR pilot sites. The majority of the stakeholders interviewed believed that eIDSR met its predetermined objectives for public health surveillance. The benefits of eIDSR included timely reporting and response to alerts and disease outbreaks, improved timeliness, and completeness of reporting, and supportive supervision to the operational levels. The strategy helped stakeholders to appreciate their roles in public health surveillance. Conclusion The eIDSR has increased the number of health facilities reporting IDSR, enabled early identification, reporting, and verification of alerts, improved timeliness and completeness of reports, and supportive supervision of staff at the operational levels. It was well accepted by the stakeholder as a system that made reporting easy with the potential to improve the public health surveillance system in Nigeria.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luka Mangveep Ibrahim ◽  
Ifeanyi Okudo ◽  
Mary Stephen ◽  
Opeayo Ogundiran ◽  
Jerry Shitta Pantuvo ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Electronic reporting of integrated disease surveillance and response (eIDSR) was implemented in Adamawa and Yobe states, North-East of Nigeria, as an innovative strategy to improve disease reporting. Its objectives were to improve the timeliness and completeness of IDSR reporting by health facilities, prompt identification of public health events, timely information sharing, and public health action. We evaluated the project to determine whether it met its set objectives.Method: We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess and document the lessons learned from the project. We reviewed the performance of the local government areas (LGAs) on timeliness and completeness of reporting, rumors identification, and reporting on the eIDSR and the traditional paper-based system using a checklist. Respondents were interviewed online on the relevance, efficiency, sustainability, project progress and effectiveness, the effectiveness of management, and potential impact and scalability of the strategy using structured questionnaires. Data were cleaned, analyzed, and presented as proportions using an MS Excel spreadsheet. Responses were also presented as direct quotes.Results: The number of health facilities reporting IDSR increased from 103 to 228 (117%) before and after implementation of the eIDSR respectively. The timeliness of reporting was 43% in the LGA compared to 73% in health facilities implementing eIDSR. The completeness of IDSR reports in the last six months before the evaluation was ≥ 85%. Of the 201 rumors identified and verified, 161 (80%) were from the eIDSR pilot sites. The majority of the stakeholders interviewed believed that eIDSR met its predetermined objectives for public health surveillance. The benefits of eIDSR included timely reporting and response to alerts and disease outbreaks, improved timeliness, and completeness of reporting, and supportive supervision to the operational levels. The strategy helped stakeholders to appreciate their roles in public health surveillance.Conclusion: The eIDSR has increased the number of health facilities reporting IDSR, enabled early identification, reporting, and verification of alerts, improved timeliness and completeness of reports, and supportive supervision of staff at the operational levels. It was well accepted by the stakeholder as a system that made reporting easy with the potential to improve the public health surveillance system in Nigeria.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luka Mangveep Ibrahim ◽  
Ifeanyi Okudo ◽  
Mary Stephen ◽  
Opeayo Ogundiran ◽  
Jerry Shitta Pantuvo ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Electronic reporting of integrated disease surveillance and response (eIDSR) was implemented in Adamawa and Yobe states, North-East of Nigeria, as an innovative strategy to improve disease reporting. Its objectives were to improve the timeliness and completeness of IDSR reporting by health facilities, prompt identification of public health events, timely information sharing, and public health action. We evaluated the project to determine whether it met its set objectives.Method: We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess and document the lessons learned from the project. We reviewed the performance of the local government areas (LGAs) on timeliness and completeness of reporting, rumors identification, and reporting on the eIDSR and the traditional paper-based system using a checklist. Respondents were interviewed online on the relevance, efficiency, sustainability, project progress and effectiveness, the effectiveness of management, and potential impact and scalability of the strategy using structured questionnaires. Data were cleaned, analyzed, and presented as proportions using an MS Excel spreadsheet. Responses were also presented as direct quotes.Results: The number of health facilities reporting IDSR increased from 103 to 228 (117%) before and after implementation of the eIDSR respectively. The timeliness of reporting was 43% in the LGA compared to 73% in health facilities implementing eIDSR. The completeness of IDSR reports in the last six months before the evaluation was ≥ 85%. Of the 201 rumors identified and verified, 161 (80%) were from the eIDSR pilot sites. The majority of the stakeholders interviewed believed that eIDSR met its predetermined objectives for public health surveillance. The benefits of eIDSR included timely reporting and response to alerts and disease outbreaks, improved timeliness, and completeness of reporting, and supportive supervision to the operational levels. The strategy helped stakeholders to appreciate their roles in public health surveillance.Conclusion: The eIDSR has increased the number of health facilities reporting IDSR, enabled early identification, reporting, and verification of alerts, improved timeliness and completeness of reports, and supportive supervision of staff at the operational levels. It was well accepted by the stakeholder as a system that made reporting easy with the potential to improve the public health surveillance system in Nigeria.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luka Mangveep Ibrahim ◽  
Ifeanyi Okudo ◽  
Mary Stephen ◽  
Opeayo Ogundiran ◽  
Jerry Shitta Pantuvo ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Electronic reporting of integrated disease surveillance and response (eIDSR) was implemented in two states in North-East Nigeria as an innovative strategy to improve disease reporting. Its objectives were to improve the timeliness and completeness of IDSR reporting by health facilities, prompt identification of public health events, timely information sharing, and public health action. We evaluated the project to determine whether it met its set objectives.Method: We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess and document the lessons learned from the project. We reviewed the performance of the Local Government Areas (LGAs) on rumors identification and reporting of IDSR data on the eIDSR and the traditional system using a checklist. Respondents were interviewed online on the relevance; efficiency; sustainability; project progress and effectiveness; effectiveness of management; and potential impact and scalability of the strategy using structured questionnaires. Quantitative data were analyzed and presented as proportions using an MS Excel spreadsheet. Qualitative data was cleaned, converted into an MS Excel database, and analyzed using Epi Info version 7.2 to obtain frequencies. Responses were also presented as direct quotes or word clouds.Results: The number of health facilities reporting IDSR increased from 103 to 228 (117%) before and after implementation of the eIDSR respectively. The completeness of IDSR reports in the last six months before the evaluation was ≥ 85%. Of the 201 rumors identified and verified, 161 (80%) were from the eIDSR pilot sites. The majority of the stakeholders interviewed believed that eIDSR met its predetermined objectives for public health surveillance. The benefits of eIDSR included timely reporting and response to alerts and disease outbreaks, improved completeness, and timeliness of reporting, and supportive supervision to the operational levels. The strategy helped the stakeholders to appreciate their roles in public health surveillance.Conclusion: The eIDSR increased the number of health facilities reporting IDSR, enabled early identification, reporting, and verification of alerts, improved completeness of reports, and supportive supervision on staff at the operational levels. It was well accepted by the stakeholder as a system that made reporting easy with the potential to improve the public health surveillance system in Nigeria.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siphiwe M Shongwe-Gama ◽  
Dr. Thulani Maphosa ◽  
Phinda Khumalo ◽  
Vusie Lokotfwako ◽  
Nhlanhla Nhlabatsi ◽  
...  

Objective: To strengthen public health surveillance and monitor implementation of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in the Kingdom of Swaziland.Introduction: Swaziland adopted the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy in 2010 to strengthen Public Health Surveillance (PHS) that fulfills International Health Regulations (2005) and the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). This strategy allows the Ministry of Health (MoH), Epidemiology and Disease Control Unit (EDCU) to monitor, prevent and control priority diseases in the country. We used a health systems strengthening approach to pilot an intervention model for IDSR implementation at five hospitals in Swaziland over a pilot phase of three months.Methods: Our intervention included cross-country IDSR trainings, sensitizations and onsite trainings targeting national and regional health teams for over 250 health workers. The EDCU developed and disseminated standardized case definitions for health facilities (HFs) to detect, confirm and report priority conditions. Trained health care workers were tasked to cascade knowledge sharing and sensitization about IDSR with their HFs during in-service trainings. The facilities were to use IDSR standard case definition as guidelines for diagnosing and reporting cases; submit monthly reports on all priority conditions to Health Management Information System (HMIS) and intensify reporting through immediate disease notification system (IDNS) for all notifiable conditions. Indicators and monitoring tools for disease surveillance and response as recommended by the technical guidelines for IDSR in the African region were developed. The intervention was evaluated at five purposively selected high-volume referral hospitals (attending to ≥1500 to 15000 outpatient visits per month), which also have maternity services.Structured questionnaires in the form of a monitoring tool, checklists and observations were used to collect data. Quantitatively, monthly reports submitted by the five facilities to HMIS were reviewed and analyzed for completeness and timeliness. Clinic supervisors were identified from outpatient, inpatient, maternity and laboratory departments as key informants to explore successes and challenges of IDSR implementation. Additionally, IDSR officers visited health facilities and observed the registers and reporting forms used to report IDSR priority conditions and the availability of IDSR guidelines.Results: The five HFs submitted monthly reports from June to August 2017 with a calculated completeness of 80% in June 2017, 60% in July and 40% in August. Timeliness was calculated was at 20% in June, 20% in July and 40% in August. IDSR officers observed that all five HFs document cases of priority diseases in registers during consultations and use daily tally sheets. However, it was observed that diseases reported through the immediate diseases notification system were not all documented in the morbidity registers and vice versa. Health workers reported to be unaware about all diseases that require immediate notification to trigger investigation, hence some disease like perinatal deaths were never notified through the IDNS system during the period of evaluation. All five hospitals reported not utilizing the standard cases definitions provided to identify and report IDSR priority diseases.Conclusions: The proportion of completeness and timeliness from the five HFs during the evaluation period was low compared to WHO recommended standards of >= 80% from all HFs. This therefore, poses challenges in monitoring and responding to the priority conditions as per IDSR standards and recommendations. All five hospitals reported not utilizing the standard cases definitions to identify and report IDSR priority diseases and this poses challenges in comparison of data across sites, monitoring priority diseases, conditions and events and also identifying the alert or epidemic thresholds. There is need to capacitate more health workers on IDSR for Swaziland to strengthen PHS and be able to prevent and control public health threats timely.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-38
Author(s):  
Mohamed Ahmed Syed ◽  
Hanan Al Mujalli ◽  
Catherine Kiely ◽  
Hamda Abdulla A/Qotba ◽  
Khalid Elawad ◽  
...  

Communicable disease outbreaks can spread rapidly, causing enormous losses to individual health, national economies and social well-being. Therefore, communicable disease surveillance is essential for protecting public health. In Qatar, electronic reporting from primary health centres was proposed as a means of improving disease notification, replacing a paper-based method of reporting (via internal mail, facsimile, email or telephone), which has disadvantages and requires active cooperation and engagement of staff. This study is a predescriptive and postdescriptive analysis, which compared disease notifications received from electronic and paper-based systems during 3-month evaluation periods (quarter 2 in 2016 and quarter 2 in 2018 for paper-based and electronic reporting, respectively) in terms of comprehensiveness, timeliness and completeness. For the 23 notifiable diseases included in this study, approximately twice as many notifications were received through the electronic reporting system as from the paper-based reporting system, demonstrating it is more comprehensive. An overall increase in notifications is likely to have a positive public health impact in Qatar. 100% of electronic notifications were received in a timely manner, compared with 28% for paper-based notifications. Findings of the study show that electronic reporting presents a revolutionary opportunity to advance public health surveillance. It is recommended that electronic reporting be rolled out more widely to improve the completeness, stability and representativeness of the national public health surveillance system in Qatar as well as other countries.


Author(s):  
Moise C. Ngwa ◽  
Song Liang ◽  
Leonard Mbam ◽  
Mouhaman Arabi ◽  
Andrew Teboh ◽  
...  

Public health surveillance is essential for early detection and rapid response to cholera outbreaks. In 2003, Cameroon adopted the integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR) strategy. We describe cholera surveillance within IDSR-strategy in Cameroon. Data is captured at health facility, forwarded to health district that compiles and directs data to RDPH in paper format. RDPH sends the data to the national level via internet and from there to the WHO. The surveillance system is passive with no data analysis at districts. Thus the goal of IDSR-strategy of data analysis and rapid response at the district has not been met yet.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Riolexus Ario ◽  
Emily Atuheire Barigye ◽  
Innocent Harbert Nkonwa ◽  
Jimmy Ogwal ◽  
Denis Nixon Opio ◽  
...  

Abstract BackgroundCivil wars in the Great Lakes region resulted in massive displacement of people to neighboring countries including Uganda, with associated humanitarian emergencies. Appropriate disease surveillance enables timely detection and response to outbreaks. We describe evaluation of the public health surveillance system in refugee settlements in Uganda and document lessons learnt.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey using the US CDC Updated Guidelines for Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems in four refugee settlements in Uganda i.e., Bidibidi, Adjumani, Kiryandongo and Rhino Camp. Using semi-structured questionnaires, key informant and focus group discussion guides, we interviewed health facility in-charges, key personnel and village health teams from 4 districts, 53 health facilities and 112 villages.ResultsAll health facilities assessed had key surveillance staff; 60% were trained on IDSR and most village health teams were trained on disease surveillance. Case detection was at 55%; facilities lacked standard case definitions (SCDs) and were using parallel Implementing Partner (IP) driven reporting system. Recording was at 79% and reporting was at 81%. Data analysis and interpretation was at 49%. Confirmation of outbreaks and events was at 76%. Preparedness was at 72% and response was at 34%. Feedback was at 82%. Recording, reporting, preparedness, feedback and confirmation of outbreaks and events were highly achieved, and capacity to evaluate and improve the system was moderately achieved. There were low scores in capacity to detect, respond and analyse data.ConclusionPublic health surveillance system had high sensitivity, timeliness and predictive value positive. It was simple, acceptable with fair data quality attributes. It was less flexible, less stable with low representativeness. The system had good recording, reporting, preparedness, feedback and confirmation of outbreaks and events. The capacity for detection, response and data analysis and interpretation was low. Lessons learnt were: IPs offer tremendous support to surveillance; training of surveillance staff on IDSR maintains effective surveillance functions; supplies of tools, personnel etc. should be planned and executed; functionalization of district teams ensures achievement of surveillance functions and attributes; regular support supervision of health facilities necessary; harmonization of reporting improves surveillance functions and attributes; appropriation of funds to districts to support refugee settlements is complementary.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Falaho Sani ◽  
Mohammed Hasen ◽  
Mohammed Seid ◽  
Nuriya Umer

Abstract Background: Public health surveillance systems should be evaluated periodically to ensure that the problems of public health importance are being monitored efficiently and effectively. Despite the widespread measles outbreak in Ginnir district of Bale zone in 2019, evaluation of measles surveillance system has not been conducted. Therefore, we evaluated the performance of measles surveillance system and its key attributes in Ginnir district, Southeast Ethiopia.Methods: We conducted a concurrent embedded mixed quantitative/qualitative study in August 2019 among 15 health facilities/study units in Ginnir district. Health facilities are selected using lottery method. The qualitative study involved purposively selected 15 key informants. Data were collected using semi-structured questionnaire adapted from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for evaluating public health surveillance systems through face-to-face interview and record review. The quantitative findings were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2016 and summarized by frequency and proportion. The qualitative findings were narrated and summarized based on thematic areas to supplement the quantitative findings.Results: The structure of surveillance data flow was from the community to the respective upper level. Emergency preparedness and response plan was available only at the district level. Completeness of weekly report was 95%, while timeliness was 87%. No regular analysis and interpretations of surveillance data, and the supportive supervision and feedback system was weak. The participation and willingness of surveillance stakeholders in implementation of the system was good. The surveillance system was found to be useful, easy to implement, representative and can accommodate and adapt to changing conditions. Report documentation and quality of data was poor at lower level health facilities. Stability of the system has been challenged by shortage of budget and logistics, staff turnover and lack of update trainings.Conclusions: The surveillance system was acceptable, useful, simple, flexible and representative. Data quality, timeliness and stability of the system were attributes that require improvement. The overall performance of measles surveillance system in the district was poor. Hence, regular analysis of data, preparation and dissemination of epidemiological bulletin, capacity building and regular supervision and feedback are recommended to enhance performance of the system.


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