We are partnering with Columbia University’s ICAP to support capacity building within the Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit within the Swaziland Ministry of Health for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR). The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) has mandated that countries within the African region are to implement IDSR in an effort to comply with the International Health Regulations (2005). Reactive funding for public health in Swaziland has created vertical reporting streams and isolated data pools of disease-specific, program specific, and function-specific data. Data collection, for this reason, is often duplicated across departments and there is limited data exchange. PHP is working with the Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit to facilitate interoperability and sharing of data collected across programs to enable integrated disease surveillance and analysis.

PHP conducted a baseline assessment and SWOT analysis of current disease surveillance data streams and the environment for integration, offered advisory services for strategic planning for the unit, and guided development of a roles and responsibilities framework for IDSR define how departments would interact and exchange data. PHP is currently building upon these successes to develop standardized and automated analyses for disease surveillance using integrated data from multiple sources and is working towards integrating ICT solutions.