Geographic information system and information visualization capacity building: Successful polio eradication and current and future challenges in the COVID-19 era for the World Health Organization's African region.

Despite a half-century-long global eradication effort, polio continues to have a devastating impact on individuals and communities worldwide, especially in low-income countries affected by conflict or geographic barriers to immunization programs. In response, the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) employs disease surveillance and vaccination campaigns coordinated through the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) Geographic Information System (GIS) Centre. Established in 2017, the AFRO GIS Centre played a key role in the eradication of wild-type polioviruses (WPVs) in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic, emergence of circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses, and transmission of WPV1 from Central Asia have led to a resurgence of polio in Sub-Saharan Africa. The AFRO GIS comprises a set of mobile device or cloud-based tools for geospatial data collection, analysis, and visualization. Using tools such as Auto-Visual Acute Flaccid Paralysis Detection and Reporting, electronic surveillance, and Integrated Supportive Supervision, GIS personnel collect polio case numbers and locations, track field worker activities, follow the movements of nomadic populations vulnerable to polio and other diseases, and determine needs for further healthcare deployments. The system is location specific and operates in real time, enabling the AFRO GIS to promptly target its responses to polio, COVID-19, Ebola virus disease, and other public health crises and natural disasters. The present review describes the components of the AFRO GIS and how the AFRO GIS Centre coordinated on-the-ground polio eradication efforts to help secure Africa's certification as WPV free. It also examines current and prospective challenges regarding other disease outbreaks in the COVID-19 era and how the AFRO GIS Centre is addressing these ongoing public health needs.

Leveraging Polio Geographic Information System Platforms in the African Region for Mitigating COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Surveillance Challenges: Viewpoint.

BACKGROUND: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is an urgent public health crisis. Estimated models projected over 150,000 deaths and 4,600,000 hospitalizations in the first year of the disease in the absence of adequate interventions. Therefore, electronic contact tracing and surveillance have critical roles in decreasing COVID-19 transmission; yet, if not conducted properly, these methods can rapidly become a bottleneck for synchronized data collection, case detection, and case management. While the continent is currently reporting relatively low COVID-19 cases, digitized contact tracing mechanisms and surveillance reporting are necessary for standardizing real-time reporting of new chains of infection in order to quickly reverse growing trends and halt the pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to describe a COVID-19 contact tracing smartphone app that includes health facility surveillance with a real-time visualization platform. The app was developed by the AFRO (African Regional Office) GIS (geographic information system) Center, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency preparedness and response team. The app was developed through the expertise and experience gained from numerous digital apps that had been developed for polio surveillance and immunization via the WHO's polio program in the African region. METHODS: We repurposed the GIS infrastructures of the polio program and the database structure that relies on mobile data collection that is built on the Open Data Kit. We harnessed the technology for visualization of real-time COVID-19 data using dynamic dashboards built on Power BI, ArcGIS Online, and Tableau. The contact tracing app was developed with the pragmatic considerations of COVID-19 peculiarities. The app underwent testing by field surveillance colleagues to meet the requirements of linking contacts to cases and monitoring chains of transmission. The health facility surveillance app was developed from the knowledge and assessment of models of surveillance at the health facility level for other diseases of public health importance. The Integrated Supportive Supervision app was added as an appendage to the pre-existing paper-based surveillance form. These two mobile apps collected information on cases and contact tracing, alongside alert information on COVID-19 reports at the health facility level; the information was linked to visualization platforms in order to enable actionable insights. RESULTS: The contact tracing app and platform were piloted between April and June 2020; they were then put to use in Zimbabwe, Benin, Cameroon, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Sudan, and their use has generated some palpable successes with respect to COVID-19 surveillance. However, the COVID-19 health facility-based surveillance app has been used more extensively, as it has been used in 27 countries in the region. CONCLUSIONS: In light of the above information, this paper was written to give an overview of the app and visualization platform development, app and platform deployment, ease of replicability, and preliminary outcome evaluation of their use in the field. From a regional perspective, integration of contact tracing and surveillance data into one platform provides the AFRO with a more accurate method of monitoring countries' efforts in their response to COVID-19, while guiding public health decisions and the assessment of risk of COVID-19.