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.

Development of a Consolidated Health Facility Masterlist Using Data From Polio Electronic Surveillance in the World Health Organization African Region.

Geospatial data reporting from surveillance and immunization efforts is a key aspect of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Africa. These activities are coordinated through the WHO Regional Office for Africa Geographic Information Systems Centre. To ensure the accuracy of field-collected data, the WHO Regional Office for Africa Geographic Information Systems Centre has developed mobile phone apps such as electronic surveillance (eSURV) and integrated supportive supervision (ISS) geospatial data collection programs.

Lessons learned from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative: A roadmap for the international COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

The COVID-19 vaccine is lauded by many as one of the greatest accomplishments in modern medicine, with the potential to definitively contain the deadliest pandemic of the last century. With the vaccine rollout now underway in the developing world, a robust, methodical, and swift global distribution effort is required to ensure that it will be done in an equitable manner. Taking into account the vast geographic, socioeconomic, cultural, and political diversity of countries around the world, global vaccination efforts have historically required multifaceted, time consuming, and labor-intensive approaches to be effective.

Conclusions of the African Regional GIS Summit (2019): using geographic information systems for public health decision-making.

The use of geographic information system (GIS) technologies to improve access to health is gaining momentum in Africa. This has become more pertinent with the increasing penetration of mobile-phone technology and internet use, and calls for innovative strategies to support implementation of the World Health Organization Sustainable Development Goals for universal health coverage on the continent. The huge potential benefits of GIS to advance health service delivery in Africa is, however, yet to be fully harnessed due to critical challenges such as proliferation of pilot projects, poor coordination, inadequate preparedness of the health workforce for GIS, lack of interoperability, and inadequate sustainable financing.

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.