ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health

Sec. Digital Public Health

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1574116

Scaling up of electronic case-based disease surveillance reporting for COVID-19 and other notifiable diseases through capacity building and antigen RDT provision: A case study of

Provisionally accepted
James  Sylvester SquireJames Sylvester Squire1Ian  NjeruIan Njeru2*Robert  MusokeRobert Musoke2Joseph  Sam KanuJoseph Sam Kanu1Fatmata  BanguraFatmata Bangura3Zikan  KoromaZikan Koroma1Doris  HardingDoris Harding1Stephen  SesayStephen Sesay2Bridget  MagobaBridget Magoba4Ismail  Mahat BashirIsmail Mahat Bashir2Victor  CaulkerVictor Caulker2Mohamed  VandiMohamed Vandi1Innocent  Bright NuwagiraInnocent Bright Nuwagira2Charles  NjugunaCharles Njuguna5
  • 1Ministry of Health, Freetown, Sierra Leone
  • 2World Health Organization, Freetown, Sierra Leone
  • 3District Health Management Team, Western Area Urban, Sierra Leone
  • 4African Field Epidemiology Network, Freetown, Sierra Leone
  • 5World Health Organization - Regional Office for Africa, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Electronic case-based disease surveillance (eCBDS) provides timely and detailed data collection on diseases and their risk factors for control actions. Use of eCBDS is still low in many African countries including Sierra Leone due to technological, financial, and human resource challenges. Sierra Leone started using eCBDS in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic provided the right opportunity for scale up. To support the scale up, a capacity building project was carried out on use of eCBDS for COVID-19 reporting as well as use of COVID-19 antigen rapid diagnostic kits (RDTs). This paper describes how the capacity building was conducted and the outcomes.This was a descriptive study where 607 health workers from 155 health facilities in 16 districts were trained on COVID-19 case-based reporting and RDTs use. The training was conducted in phases from November 2021 to June 2022 and post-training monitoring for impact was done up to May 2024. Data collection was done mainly through the eCBDS system where quantitative data was downloaded and analyzed for response timelines. Qualitative data was collected from key informants from selected health facilities using a semi-structured questionnaire.The number of health facilities that had ever reported a case of a notifiable disease through the eCBDS in the country was 385/1423 (27%) as of 30 th June 2021 (before training) and this increased to 58% as of 30 th May 2024 (endline). The total number of cases (all diseases) reported in eCBDS from January 2019 to 30 th May 2024 was 54,794. Of the reported cases, 44,908 (82%) were suspected COVID-19 cases of which 7,634 (17%) were confirmed positive. Before the training, 97.3% of suspected COVID-19 cases were notified to the district by the health facilities within 24 hours, and this improved slightly to 98.1% afterwards. Case investigation with sample collection within 24 hours of notification improved from 91.6% to 98.2% before and after the training, respectively.The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity for the country to scale up eCBDS in more health facilities, and this improved notification and investigation timelines. However, more still needs to be done to ensure countrywide use of eCBDS.

Keywords: electronic, Case-Based, disease surveillance, COVID-19, Sierra Leone

Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Squire, Njeru, Musoke, Kanu, Bangura, Koroma, Harding, Sesay, Magoba, Bashir, Caulker, Vandi, Nuwagira and Njuguna. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Ian Njeru, World Health Organization, Freetown, Sierra Leone

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