Since 2020, MEDECINS SAN FRONTIERES LA Foundation (MSF) Niger, Epicentre MSF, Niger Ministry of Health and Medic have partnered to design and deploy an alert based platform in Niger to support health care workers to report notifiable diseases, create a feedback loop within the healthcare system and support response at the local and national level. The Alerte Niger mobile app was initially developed to support COVID-19 surveillance and after the success with COVID-19 response, the Niger Ministry of Health worked with partners and stakeholders to customize the app to support surveillance for potential epidemics.
The Alerte Niger app is currently being used to automate the health facility event based surveillance (HEBS) workflows and supports the health care workers in the following ways:
- Health care workers working at the facility are able to use the app to register suspected health event signals, collect samples as they fill an investigation report.
- Submission of a investigation report would generate a task for District Surveillance Coordinator, who uses the app to verify the signals, conduct risk assessments and send laboratory results notifications to health care workers at the lower levels.
- Through the platform, National and Regional Response teams are also able to review validated signals and fill the results form.
To date, the app has been deployed to five health facilities in Maradi region and plans are underway to scale up to the remaining six regions in Niger. Thank you Hiell (hiell@medic.org), @Marina, Loukman (loukman@medic.org) and the MSF Niger team for the great presentation. Here is the recording of the community story presentation.
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