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.
Introduction event-based surveillance (EBS) is a surveillance method involving systematic and prompt data collection on incidents of public health importance, and complements the current indicator-based surveillance system and the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response System (IDSR). It also promotes a rapid assessment and response to public health emergencies in Nigeria, although there is a lack of information regarding the status of EBS among Public Health Stakeholders in Nigeria; hence our study aimed to assess the awareness, availability, and utility of EBS among Nigerian public health stakeholders. Methods we conducted a cross-sectional study to assess the awareness, availability, functionality, and utilization of EBS in the 36 States in Nigeria, plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We interviewed 53 stakeholders in disease surveillance and response using a self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire to obtain responses on the awareness of the event-based surveillance system, availability, and functionality. We also assessed the common structures used to report health-related events and the availability of minimum requirements for an event-based surveillance system. We performed descriptive statistics for the data obtained. Results the majority of respondents were males and 37.7% were disease surveillance and notification officers (DSNOs). Awareness of EBS was poor with about half, 49% of the respondents reported hearing of EBS, but only 17% described it correctly. The overall level of availability of the EBS reporting structure was inadequate, 28.2% and poorly utilised in the States. Conclusion the awareness, availability, and utilization of event-based surveillance systems are low in Nigeria. The government should improve the feasibility and utility of EBS in the States to enhance early disease detection and response.
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.
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.
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