Announcing the eHealth Africa Academy in Kano

With over a decade of experience developing and deploying digital solutions across Africa and some of the most experienced tech professionals in our team, eHealth Africa is committed to sharing knowledge and empowering the next generation to solve local problems using technology and data. We are announcing the launch of eHealth Africa Academy in Nigeria. The first cohort of the Academy, which will run from February 29, 2020, to April 25, 2020, and will focus on teaching participants basic web development skills in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and how to apply these skills to start a career in web design. '

The academy will use a combination of in-person workshops and online courses to cover the curriculum within the two-month period. eHealth Africa invites participants with basic computer knowledge to apply to join the Academy. The costs of the program are being covered by the organization and will be free for the participants, however, interested participants must have access to a laptop and internet, and must be able to attend the in-person workshops in Kano during the course of the program. 

Strengthening the Malaria Continuum of Care through Data Collection and Research

By Les de Wit and Emerald Awa-Agwu

In 2018, there were approximately 258 million cases of Malaria worldwide and 93% of these cases occurred in Africa. Pregnant women and children have been the focus of most Malaria eradication projects and this has led to a remarkable decrease in the prevalence and incidence of the disease in this population1. However, among young people and non-pregnant adults, the number of new cases is on the rise.1 and very little is known about the attitudes and health-seeking behavior of this group around Malaria.2

Patients at Nuhu Bamalli Maternity Hospital

To answer the questions about the knowledge, attitude and behavior patterns of young people and to inform Malaria strategy and program development to eliminate the disease, data was needed. 

With our expertise in data collection, eHealth Africa teamed up with Restless Development, a youth-led development organization, whose mission is to place young people at the forefront of change and development and CUAMM, an Italian non-governmental organization. This key goal of the project was to support the implementation of the Fighting Malaria Improving Health Project, funded by Comic Relief and GSK.

How did we do this?

eHA developed the digital survey tool, set up mobile devices for data collection and provided data visualization and analysis, as well as related training. The survey was created using an open-source tool often utilized in low resource settings, Open Data Kit (ODK). 

Following the creation of the electronic survey, tablets were installed with an ODK app and configured to download the survey form. Data was collected from 5,000 individuals between the ages of 15 - 24 in three chiefdoms within the Port Loko district of Sierra Leone. Chiefdoms are the third and lowest administrative levels of governance in Sierra Leone. eHA trained a team of young people to conduct the survey and send reports electronically. Data collection could take place in the absence of an internet connection because of ODK’s ability to store data offline and then, synchronize to the server periodically when an internet connection became available.

eHA has developed an ODK companion tool, Gather, which allows for secure turnkey integration with various data sharing solutions. Using Gather, the collected data was able to be viewed online in an open-source visualization service, Kibana. The Gather and Kibana connection allowed representation of data in near real-time - as soon as the survey responses were synced from the mobile tablets the survey results would appear live in Kibana which had been configured with a number of data monitoring dashboards to provide aggregated views of response data.

At the conclusion of the two data collection periods, the results were automatically compared within Kibana and workshops were held in Lunsar in conjunction with all stakeholders to review and discuss survey findings.

A refresher training on ODK for researchers in Lunsar, Sierra Leone

Overall, the insights gained from these projects supported learning around how action research can help young people to take a leadership role in identifying the underlying causes of public health issues in communities.

eHealth Africa in the Fight against Malaria

Malaria is a public health issue that eHealth Africa is extremely passionate about. We have collaborated with several partners to identify challenges within the continuum of care and to provide the decision-makers and program planners with solutions that are appropriate for their contexts and with data that paints a true picture of the situation so that they can make informed decisions. 

A data collector in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Recently, we supported Malaria Consortium to map nine hard-to-reach local government areas of Kaduna State and eleven hard-to-reach local government areas of Kano State. We leveraged our expertise in Geographic Information Systems to collect geospatial data relating to settlement names and locations, and the nearest functional primary and secondary health facilities to the settlements over a period of two weeks.

Also, last year, eHealth Africa partnered with Case Western Reserve University, Hemex Health and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) to design the Sickle and Malaria Accurate Remote Testing (SMART), an integrated point of care platform that diagnoses, tracks and monitors sickle cell disease and malaria in low-resource settings. The solution won the Vodafone Wireless Initiative Project Prize. 

eHA also worked with THINKMD and the Kano State Primary Health Care Management Board (KSPHCMB) to implement a 2-month study among community health workers (CHWs) in five LGAs to determine if the MEDSINC, a digital clinical assessment platform could improve adherence to the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) clinical guidelines. 

As always, our goal is to support our partners with technological solutions that can improve health delivery and increase access to quality health services for underserved populations.

LOMIS Stock Goes National!

By Joshua Ozugbakun and Emerald Awa-Agwu

How can accurate, real-time health inventory data will improve access to essential medicines and save lives?

With over 23,640 health facilities alone in Nigeria (as at 2005), collecting, managing and keeping track of health commodity stock data can be cumbersome. For the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), the agency that is tasked with ensuring that pharmaceutical and health commodities are available in all the 36 states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, this is a major challenge. To effectively prevent, treat and control diseases, medical supplies, and essential medicines must be available at all health facilities, treatment centers, and laboratories at all times. If the NCDC is unable to keep track of its own stock inventory data, its ability to deliver on its mandate will be hindered.

Prior to now, NCDC used to stock, track delivery, and management of pharmaceutical products using paper-based documentation. This method was not only error-prone but made it difficult to access and analyze information about pharmaceutical commodities stock and allocation across the 36 states in Nigeria and Abuja (FCT). This led to delays in the decision-making process to replenish commodities and in turn, stockouts at health facilities and treatment centers. 

The resultant effects of these delays and stockouts are poor health outcomes like high mortality and morbidity rates, low life expectancies, and distrust in the health system. There are already several unpleasant stories of people who had diseases that were not detected or treated adequately because the medical supplies and essential medicines were unavailable, and the statistics only worsen as one goes from urban to rural areas.

Health workers in Chiranchi Primary Health Center using LoMIS Stock to take health stock inventory

The LoMIS Stock mobile application

To address this challenge, NCDC partnered with eHealth Africa to automate its supply chain processes for the distribution of pharmaceutical and laboratory commodities. eHA introduced and scaled up LoMIS Stock, a solution that has been used by the Kano State Primary Health Care Management Board (KSPHCMB) to manage the supply and availability of vaccines and health commodities at last-mile health facilities, since 2014 with great success.

The tool allows health workers to submit reports relating to vaccine stock availability and utilization, alongside other details as required by various users, thus ensuring that near-real-time data relating to vaccine and pharmaceutical stock inventory can be accessed by decision-makers and health program planners for evidence-based planning and action. For example, NCDC’s ability to monitor the real-time stock levels of antiviral medications like Rivabirin at health facilities will ensure that response campaigns are executed in a seamless manner and that Nigeria is better able to respond to outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic diseases.

Since October 2019, eHealth Africa’s Technical team has been working with NCDC’s Supply Chain Unit to configure/customize the tool whilst entering data on its National Stockpile onto the system. Currently, over 300 commodities have been entered onto the system and we expect more commodities to be added in the course of this year. This will ensure that the distribution of these commodities is faster and more efficient and that the agency’s operational processes are targeted and data-driven. 

eHA and NCDC are employing a staggered approach to ensure that the tool is rolled out and adopted by the State Ministries of Health, treatment centers and NCDC-affiliated laboratories across 36 states and FCT of Nigeria by June 2020.  The potential for transforming health service delivery and health information management in Nigeria through technology is limitless.