October 16, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A program to help sub-Saharan African countries collect good, up-to-date health data using handheld devices instead of relying on slower, more expensive paper surveys has gotten a big boost.
The Vodafone Foundation and United Nations Foundation Technology Partnership has committed more than $2-million to the project, which will allow it to expand to 22 countries by the end of 2008.
“Collecting health data is the base of everything we do in public health,” says Joel D. Selanikio, an epidemiologist and director of DataDyne.org, the Washington nonprofit organization leading the effort.
But, he says, conducting the large-scale surveys to gather the information has traditionally been difficult and expensive, particularly in developing countries.
To try to change that, DataDyne developed EpiSurveyor, free, open-source software that makes it easy for government officials to program the devices with the questions they want health workers to ask, without the need to hire expensive consultants.
The organization also worked with the World Health Organization to distribute handheld devices and train health workers in Kenya and Zambia.
The health agencies quickly put the new tools to work.
In early 2007, Kenya began an emergency polio-vaccination campaign after cases of the disease were reported among refugees who had fled violence in neighboring Somalia — the first cases in Kenya in more than 20 years. Health workers used EpiSurveyor to track the number and location of the children who were inoculated.
DataDyne is working on a version of the EpiSurveyor software that can be downloaded to mobile phones, a development that the organization hopes will further drive down the cost of data collection. (Countries in Africa have seen a steep increase in cellphone use in recent years.)
Dr. Selanikio says he is optimistic about the long-term impact of the program. Several months after receiving training, the Zambian health ministry conducted a national survey to measure the results of its measles-vaccination campaign without any assistance from DataDyne.
In fact, Dr. Selanikio didn’t even hear about the survey until after the results had been tabulated. When he heard the news, he says, he remembers thinking, “Wow, we haven’t just been talking about building capacity or transferring capability or all the stuff that you constantly hear people talking about, we have actually done it.”
In April, the Vodafone Foundation and United Nations Foundation Technology Partnership published a report, available on its Web site, that describes how charities are using wireless technology in global health, humanitarian aid, and environmental programs, including the EpiSurveyor project.
For more information: Go to http://www.datadyne.org and http://www.unfoundation.org/vodafone.
