OneHealth Event Based Surveillance (EBS)
OneHealth Event Based Surveillance (EBS) enhancement and Data visualization dashboard project
We live in the interconnected world (Global Village) with increasing risk of emerging and remerging infections. Management of emerging infections is a real challenge now a day. The evidence reported in various studies indicates that epidemic disease impacts on a country's economy through several channels, including public health, transportation, livestock, agriculture, tourism sectors and many more. At the same time, trade with other countries may also be impacted, while the inter-connectedness of modern economies means that an epidemic can also implicate international supply chains (EPRS, Economic impact of epidemics & pandemics Report 2020). A 2019 joint report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank (WB) estimates the impact of such a pandemics like influenza, bringing the total cost to 2.2 %-4.8 % of global GDP (US$3 trillion). The report further notes that, in such an event, South Asia's GDP could potentially fall by 2 % (US$53 billion)(World Annual report on global preparedness for health emergencies, Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, 2019).
Finding outbreaks faster and managing them empirically can contribute to reduce illness, death and economic loss from endemic –epimemic-pandemic. One Health recognizes that the health of humans, animals and the environment are interconnected. Climate change and other environmental factors exacerbate disease emergence and spread. Significant delays in outbreak prevention, detection and responses lead to needless morbidity, mortality and economic loss. These delays are maybe due to:
1. Lack to trained human workforce
2. Lack of logistics, funding, and other resources
3. Weakness of disease reporting systems and inter-sectoral (& relevant sectors) sharing
4. Lack of digitalization and visualization “multi sectoral data feeds”
5. Lack of Digital monitoring tools to capture local Event Based Surveillance (EBS)data feeds
6. Lack of digital platform integrating One Health approach for data sharing
7. Lack of sharing collaboration through integrated information systems for early warning, surveillance, detection of potential outbreaks as well as response.
To mitigate the identified difficulties, One Health Secretariat (OHS) at IEDCR aim is to develop ‘One Health event base surveillance (EBS) enhancement and Data visualization system’, which will be an electronic, relevant, real-time event base surveillance (EBS) system. It is planned to use digital monitoring tools to capture “multi sectoral data feeds.” It will provide an early signal of potential out breaks, an early warning sign of potential human and animal disease. It will also have timeliness metrics incorporated to inform timeliness of information flow and response.
Description:
In Bangladesh the sustainable and effective outcome of a One Health approach is planned to be achieved through Government owned National One Health coordination mechanism the ‘One Health Secretariat’, which acts as the focal point (agency) to perform coordination and ensuring collaboration of relevant sectors for joint surveillance, joint outbreak investigations and advocacy with support from National One Health Platforms. It’s a Government agency operated by seconded officers from Public Health, Animal Health and Environmental Health/ Wild life sectors.
Scope of work of One Health Secretariat (OHS), Bangladesh:
1. Initiate and support the transformation towards one health surveillance.
2. Promote the sharing of real times surveillance & data collection across the sectors.
3. Coordination for event based ‘Joint outbreak investigation’ team
4. Expand the development and utilization of early warning and alert systems for prediction and prevention of outbreaks and joint response.
5. Use the data from EBS-dashboard to detect signals of potential outbreaks and to monitor the impact of investments in epidemic and pandemic preparedness.
The ‘One Health Event Based Surveillance (EBS) enhancement and Data visualization dashboard’ will serve a more integrated approach to various (EBS and IBS) disease surveillance data source from different sectors to protect and promote human health, animal health and the wildlife/environment. At present, data are being collected and used separately by the various stakeholders from different e-Systems (personal reporting, Cell-Phone, SMS, emails, web-reporting, WhatsApp, we-chat, social media, e-electronic and print media etc.). Usually the data or information are not integrated and used jointly and comprehensively at national level to detect the early warning signals which could lead timely and coordinated actions or detect signals of potential outbreaks & response. It could also highlight existing delays in detection and information flow. The existing e-system receives individual & sectoral reporting and response is also independent. But specific mechanism will be developed (after discussion among relevant partners) as required for integrating all these information/messages/events from the one-health respective sectors for sharing with other related sector through the proposed dashboard. Vision is to weekly sub-national level verified data and various verified EBS sourced data as relevant to the dashboard for real time data sharing between sectors. Proposed dashboard will be utilized for this purpose. An “Apps” will be developed for sectoral surveillance units for sharing these verified data and for collaborated efforts.
The interactive data visualization dashboard will help OneHealth Secretariat (OHS), enabling collaborative systematic collection and analysis of data (validated data from respective epi-units) from multiple domains to detect health-related events and produce information which leads to actions aimed at attaining optimal health for people, animals and environment. On the other hand, harmonizing information sources will strengthen the day to day surveillance systems. On behalf of ‘team Bangladesh’, IEDCR will coordinate the potential partnership on ‘One Health EBS enhancement and Data visualization’ with involvement of all relevant sectors, since ‘OHS’ is situated at IEDCR. The dashboard will serve in bidirectional way, on one hand it will collect information and data (validated data from respective epi-units) and on the other will feed with events of interest to Public health, animal health and other sectors information system to analyze for potential warnings to any upcoming event of public health concern or threat. The developed dashboard cross-link other systems which will practically facilitate the data sharing among different actors, will assist with analytics and visualizations enabling rapid risk assessment and evidence-based decision making and contribute to knowledge generation on disease patterns by looking at the data in a joint analysis framework between human, animal and other sectors.
One Health Event Based Surveillance (EBS) enhancement and Data visualization dashboard will serve a more integrated approach to disease surveillance data source from different sectors to protect and promote human health, animal health and the safe environment. At present, data are being collected and used separately by the various stakeholders from different e-Systems. The data are rarely integrated and used jointly and comprehensively at national level to detect the early warning signals which could lead timely and coordinated actions or detect signals of potential outbreaks & response. This will help the country not only to prevent and control the event but also national or international communities to participate for any assistance or help if needed. This will also help the country to develop a generic platform see the trends of endemic EIDs and to report any events and progress of any responses. Policymakers will also be able to develop policy from the dashboard.
Government of Bangladesh is committed to ensure safe and healthy life not only for the humans but also livestock and wildlife animals of the country. ‘One Health Event Based Surveillance (EBS) enhancement and Data visualization dashboard’ will serve as real time disease events not only in Human population but also warning from Animal & Wildlife/environment sectors for any emerging or re-emerging zoonotic diseases of public health concern. For example the dashboard during Covid-19, the government has even engaged beyond one-health approach the non-engaged ‘One heath sectors from multisectoral and multilateral partners. So, we anticipate the ‘Data visualization dashboard’ will be a convincing project for the government to sustain this after completion/ending of the project with technical support from ‘Ending Pandemics’. Currently, the Epidemiological units (Epi-unit) are responsible for current line management of reported events for validation in the respective One-health sectors.
Goals and objectives:
One of the main objectives of this project is to “Strengthen the operational capacity of organizations, OHS to prepare, rapidly scale up, augment systems, bridge across local, national, regional, and global areas in order to more efficiently launch an integrated multi-sectoral humanitarian response to future infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics.”
Goals:
The goal is to develop a ‘One Health surveillance system platform’ to enable early detection and coordinated joint response to disease outbreaks.
Objectives
In order to achieve the goal, the following objectives are envisioned:
1. To identify existing surveillance data and information gaps (data sharing) between different sectors and to establish the single platform based surveillance system in Bangladesh context
2. To build a platform that integrates existing EBS ( surveillance in Public-health, Animal Health and wildlife/ Environmental Health Sectors)- by developing adequate ‘Information Technologies (IT)’capacity for information exchange between sectors;
3. Integration with WHO EIOS and OIE, WAHIS.
4. To develop guidelines, protocols and SOPs for uninterrupted flow of information and data sharing to appropriately implement the systems;
5. To train key stakeholders such as Public health, Animal Health, Wildlife, Environmental health and community members in timely detection and responding to outbreaks signals.
6. To include timeliness milestone dates into the platform for real time timeliness metrics
7. To provide relevant information to concerned authorities to convert information into action
8. To share the good practice and experience nationally and internationally (e.g. via the South Asia Network or CORDS or ECHO.
Procedure:
The intended sources for EBS are-
· Reporting from Local Health care services manager (Upazilla or District mangers)
· Emails, social media
· Mobile apps, SMS, WhatsApp;
· Public web reporting for animal health;
· Environmental information;
· Rumor management;
· e-Print Media and electronic media reporting.
Moreover Information from the following source (Media/ EBS Information) will be also be collected by the OHS for sharing with the respective Sectors Epidemiology Unit for verification
• Social Media
• Web reporting
• Health-Map
• Pro-med
• Etc.
Supportive documents:
• Guidelines for Designing OH EBS Enhancement & Data (Management) Visualization Dashboard
• Data Visualization Dashboard Operational Manual
Contact One Health Event Based Surveillance Data Dashboard (OHEBSDD):
E-mail: contact.ohebsdd@gmail.com
Whats-app: 01950229900 (Hotline) (OH Emergency Response)
Website: http://ohebsdd.org/dash
