Building one of the world’s largest data surveillance platforms
By Alexis Barnes on September 19, 2016 in Health Data Systems, News
Leveraging a massive network of community volunteers, Akros works with the Zambian government and UNICEF to manage one of the world’s largest data surveillance platforms. The platform, designed and scaled for monitoring sanitation uptake in rural villages, relies on a network of over 3,600 community champions (CCs), environmental health technicians (EHTs), and other government representatives at the district level to report on sanitation uptake from ~ 21,000 villages across Zambia using mobile devices. The sanitation platform, which includes information on community and school led total sanitation and facial and environmental cleanliness for trachoma elimination is the largest surveillance platform in Zambia. However, Akros also supports similar community data collection systems in Zambia for malaria, education and land tenure. The systems, although different in content, all funnel data up from the community level into national level DHIS2 databases using similar technology. Many of the community volunteers use their mobile phone to collect data for more than one of the systems, reporting on multiple issues simultaneously such as latrine standards and mosquito net usage in their communities.
How does this work?
Across all sectors, it begins with a feature phone, a simple Nokia model mobile device. In their respective sectors, volunteers visit the households in their specific catchment area and survey specific indicators such as hand washing stations, proper number of mosquito nets per household member and latrine covers. They then input this information into the mobile phone DHIS2 platform for that month. With consistent data input, the software then allows anyone with a username, password and Internet access the ability to see up-to-date data on malaria, sanitation and trachoma statistics for different districts and provinces in Zambia. In community-led total sanitation (CLTS) alone, more than 1,300 village-level Community Champions (CCs) provide monthly reports to DHIS2 from over 13,500 villages.
