Post authored by Antony Khaemba, Project Manager
COVID-19 surveillance and early detection are critical to preventing the spread of the disease, and to protect those who are most vulnerable. Over the past several weeks, our team has worked in close collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Health (MoH), the Palladium Group, mHealth Kenya, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT)and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to build a COVID-19 tracking system to improve reporting and support counties across Kenya.
Our team held multiple meetings with key stakeholders to understand the requirements of the end-users and worked in partnership with the Palladium Group to design, develop, and iterate on a system to best support them. The resulting CHT-powered COVID-19 tracking app enables disease surveillance teams to register contacts, report suspected COVID-19 cases to the national surveillance system, and conduct investigations for suspected cases.
To meet the needs of our partners and context, the COVID-19 tracking app functions offline and is interoperable with KenyaEMR (built on OpenMRS). The two systems jointly support workflows for case registration, contact listing, tracing, investigations, COVID-19 laboratory orders, and data exchange with the laboratory.
This week, we facilitated a national-level Training of Trainers (ToT) conducted on the COVID-19 tracking system for Contact Tracers, rapid response officers, MoH officials, and WHO officers. In the session, participants were trained on the COVID-19 tracking system, the KenyaEMR system, dashboards, and the Jitenge app developed by mHealth Kenya. In the coming weeks, based on directives from the MoH, the master trainers will cascade the training to the Surveillance Officers in the counties as per the national implementation plan.
We’re proud to support the MoH, the Palladium Group, and our other partners on this endeavor to build robust surveillance systems in Kenya.