Novel Approach to Support Rapid Data Collection, Management, and Visualization During the COVID-19 Outbreak Response in the World Health Organization African Region: Development of a Data Summarization and Visualization Tool.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges to the systematic and timely sharing of COVID-19 field data collection and management. The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with health partners on the rollout and implementation of a robust electronic field data collection platform. The delay in the deployment and rollout of this electronic platform in the WHO African Region, as a consequence of the application of large-scale public health and social measures including movement restrictions and geographical area quarantine, left a gap between data collection and management.

Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy: current status, challenges and perspectives for the future in Africa.

In 1998, the WHO African region adopted a strategy called Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR). Here, we present the current status of IDSR implementation; and provide some future perspectives for enhancing the IDSR strategy in Africa. In 2017, we used two data sources to compile information on the status of IDSR implementation: a pretested rapid assessment questionnaire sent out biannually to all countries and quarterly compilation of data for two IDSR key performance indicators (KPI).