An epidemiologist with the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme (MLW) says the use of a digital monitoring system which streamlines the collection, processing, reporting, and storage of data under the Programme’s Blantyre Cholera Surveillance Strengthening Project is enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in the fight against the waterborne disease.
Speaking during an episode of Emerging Insights, a half – hour televised magazine program whose aim is to bring health research closer to the public, a Clinical Research Associate with MLW Upendo Lisa Mseka underscored the need for a robust surveillance system for the success of the initiative.
Mseka explained that the initiative being used is the One Health Surveillance platform, a modernized and robust mobile application that has currently been deployed in 11 implementation facilities which are responsible for reporting 75% of Cholera cases in Blantyre.
“To have a good surveillance system, we need quality data that will be generated in real-time. So we looked at having a digital surveillance system called the One Health Surveillance Platform (OHSP),” said Mseka.
Her remarks are shared by MLW’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Response (IDSR) focal persons for Bangwe Health Centre Enock Malinki and his counterpart at Limbe Health Centre Washen Thomas. They add unlike the current method, use of traditional data methods had a number of challenges including being time consuming and vulnerability to human error.
Data by the MLW Programme and the Ministry of Health indicates the cholera outbreak which started in February 2022 was the worst in Malawi’s history, prompting the Programme to initiate the Project in April, 2023. UNICEF records show that by 24 July 2023, the country had registered 58, 944 cases with 1, 766 deaths.
The MLW is implementing the Project in collaboration with the Blantyre District Health Office (DHO) and the Public Health Institute of Malawi (PHIM), principally to systematically gather and document cholera cases within the Blantyre region, to position MLW’s Programme at the forefront of cholera outbreak response strategies.
