Paravida is contributing to establishing a demographic and health surveillance site in the catchment area of Kagando Hospital, as a result of discussions with the leadership of the Hospital and local colleagues. In September, following an information campaign with popular meetings and in line with the policies of the Ministry of Health, the rural communities surrounding the hospital were mapped by trained field personnel. GPS coordinates of all the inhabited houses were recorded. Then the village health teams made lists of the population on home visits, lists that will be put on computers and updated by supervised local health-workers, each re-visiting a limited number of the households regularly, using smart-phones for recording outcome of pregnacies, births, deaths, results of surgical interventions and so on. Clinical hospital records are also in the process of being digitized at Kagando, and hospital and community data will be processed together. This will allow follow-up and evaluation of health outcomes and the regular home visits will also be used to inform and remind people of the value of the existing preventive services (antenatal care, well-baby clinics including immunizations etc). The data collected will be reported to the relevant authorities and also directly to those immediately concerned, serving the purpose of popular mobilization for health. Further, the GPS data will make possible the study of the spatial distribution of health and disease, the surveillance and early detection of epidemic infections and more. Along with the Karolinska Institute, we hope to involve other academic institutions including the African Demographic and Health Research Centre in Nairobi.
We are presently recruiting and training more local health teams and completing the population census. Paravida is providing each village health worker with a smart-phone, accomodating double sim-cards (so that private and project use of the phone can be kept strictly separate). An app will allow each phone to be preloaded with the basic info of that VHW’s households and also to carry tailored and targeted health messages to be conveyed to the household members.