Via Topcongofm.net: In response to Ebola, IOM computerizes data collection at priority entry points. Excerpt from the Google translation:
"These tools enable our teams to provide faster and more accurate assistance to the Congolese people affected, but also to facilitate the identification of lost contacts, which represent an internal risk in terms of identification of the chain of contamination and the contamination of unaffected areas and to cut the chain of contamination, " explains Fabien Sambussy, head of mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the DRC, who handed 71 digital tablets to teams deployed for surveillance at Entry Points (POE) and Control Points (POC).
The effectiveness of the fight against EVD also includes improved information gathering techniques at entry points and checkpoints in the endemic provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.
The configuration of these tablets will allow the teams of the response to search and detect, in one click, the name of a high-risk contact who would go through the control points.
Each device, handed out to teams deployed at checkpoints, has an updated list of people who have been in contact with positive Ebola cases. This list is developed by WHO.
"It's instantly accessible and you can share information with all the control points. Something you can not do with a piece of paper. The second thing is also to see in real time what are the consumption and the frequentations of the points of passage," notes the head of the mission of the IOM in DRC.
In the war against Ebola, the detection of people in contact with the sick is valuable.
"You have to know that a patient is generating contacts. And those contacts are likely to get sick. So, we try to follow them for 21 days. But the problem is that these contacts are moving. And when they move, at the entry points, you have to be able to detect and isolate them," says Mamadou Bah, a member of IOM's Ebola response team. Digital tablets also offer other benefits in responding to emergencies in affected areas.
