Data Coordination Vital To Emergency Health Response – Expert

Health experts have emphasised the vital role of proper data coordination in emergency health response and its potential to mitigate the impact of pandemics.

They spoke at the COVID-19 Impact Mitigation Project Close Out Ceremony themed, “Navigating Health Data in a Pandemic: Overcoming Challenges, Embracing Innovation and Shaping the Future” recently in Abuja.

The project, implemented by Data for Implementation (Data.FI) with funding from the United States Agency International Development (USAID), aimed to provide time-limited support to the COVID-19 response in Nigeria.

The programme was implemented in Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Edo, Cross River, Kano, Nigeria and Oyo.

It established Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) in eight states and enabled the setting up of electronic medical record systems.

The senior regional ,anager at Data.FI, Dr Sulaiman Dauda, highlighted the importance of data in responding to emerging health threats.

He noted that poor data collection hindered proper response to issues, but digitalisation improved data quality.

“So that is one of the reasons why we have poor quality of data, but moving towards electronic system, digitalisation of the data, we find that it improves substantially the quality of the data.

“So we have been working with USAID and other partners on what we call the health informatics community of practice to develop Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems.

“We have developed the Dynamics Plus EMR system, which is currently in use in about 17 different states, USAID is supporting Nigeria.”

The chief consultant epidemiologist at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Ganiyu Jamiu, emphasised the need for robust public health EOCs to respond to medical emergencies.

“We realised that some states do not even have a building to call EOC centers. When there is an outbreak that is when people gather themselves in one office and call it an EOC.”

Jamiu said with this, they were able to see the need to have a structure and equipped to look more functional to be able to respond to emergencies, whether public health or a medical emergency.