Good news! Maybe some African countries will introduce these sophisticated health monitoring systems faster than the West.
"When patients at clinics throughout Senegal test positive for diseases like malaria, their cases are linked to a digital “web of surveillance” maintained by hospitals and clinics throughout the country.
The system, Senegal’s Syndromic Sentinel Surveillance System (“4S”), is run by the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, and allows health officials to quickly trace disease patterns in real time.
So far, the system has flagged malaria mutations, dengue outbreaks, and the spread of West Nile virus.
Regional expansion: The 4S model now spans 10 West African countries, creating a “regional tripwire” that detects outbreaks. ..."
"... Healthcare workers at 44 “sentinel sites” – hospitals and clinics enrolled in the program – enter each patient’s symptoms into a centralised database via phone or laptop. From here, the system produces a weekly bulletin mapping disease patterns across the country.
When anomalies appear – clusters of fevers, spikes in diarrhoea – samples taken routinely from every patient are rushed by motorbike to IPD in Dakar or its satellite laboratories.
There, they are analysed using high-tech diagnostic machines.
Each vial of blood or saliva is screened for a range of infectious diseases: Covid-19, malaria, tuberculosis, Zika, yellow fever, Ebola – even the plague.
Samples are also genomically sequenced, scrutinised letter by letter for mutations or changes in the pathogen’s DNA.
Any abnormalities are uploaded to international databases and shared with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global surveillance network.
It means that within hours, health authorities across Africa – and beyond – know that something new is moving through Senegal’s clinics. ..."
Inside the alert system protecting West Africa from the next pandemic "An invisible web of surveillance hunts dangerous pathogens before they can spread and spiral out of control"
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