The Kano State Polio Emergency Operations Center
When designing technology and data solutions, we take the unique needs and contexts of our partners into account. We are then able to give them custom solutions that integrate seamlessly with their systems and that can be deployed easily to respond to active and potential public health emergencies. We provide operational support to Nigeria’s Polio Emergency Operations Centers (PEOCs). Initially designed to coordinate the country’s response to Polio, the EOCs now serve as a command center for decision-makers, program planners, and partners in the health space to plan and mount a coordinated response to all public health emergencies and outbreaks.
In Kano State, the EOC has been instrumental for Routine Immunization (RI) and Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs). The State Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Center (SERICC) uses the well-equipped data infrastructure at the EOC to easily visualize health facility immunization data and immunization coverage data from campaigns on a weekly basis in order to monitor thresholds of priority infectious diseases. This helps them proactively identify patterns and trends in disease occurrence and respond more promptly to forestall outbreaks or epidemics.
On April 11, 2020, when Kano State recorded its first COVID-19 case, we quickly needed to upgrade the phone system so that the state EOC could better respond to the outbreak. Kano state needed a call center where community members could report cases and persons of interest could be followed up. While we set up the call center, we needed to switch the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) from Elastix 2.5 to 3CX. A PBX phone system is a private telephone network used within an organization that allows users to communicate internally (within their company) and externally (with the outside world), using different communication channels. It is ideal for call centers because it also allows for more calls than physical phone lines and free calls between users.
The Kano State COVID-19 call center
This became relevant because it shortened our turnaround time so that we could set up any additional support queues and lines faster. The upgrade also supported an unlimited number of agents to be added to the phone system at no additional cost and even allow agents to work remotely. This was vital for the response in Kano State to keep track of the large number of calls that they received and the persons of interest that were identified in a short time.
The call center agents do not need to be in a physical location to operate the lines which aligned well with the state’s movement restrictions and social distancing guidelines. Our partners and stakeholders were still able to collaborate, discuss, and resolve issues quickly using the 3CX WebMeeting feature for video conferencing calls. The call center logs over 500 calls on a weekly basis.
Because of our experience with Kano state, we were also able to support Nigeria’s COVID-19 response led by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) by developing an automated system for tracking and following up persons of interest who have been exposed to COVID-19 for a period of 14 days. The system can call thousands of contacts on a daily basis to verify whether or not they have developed symptoms.
Members of our Helpdesk team monitoring the PBX system
Thanks to 3CX technology, we currently support more than 3,000 dashboard users across 12 states with the potential for an unlimited number. We believe that technology is the key to developing sustainable and scalable solutions that can strengthen health systems.