The International Health Regulations Mandate on the Development and Maintenance of Core Surveillance Systems: Prospects and Challenges of Meeting the 2016 Deadline in Africa

The use of mobile technology in disease surveillance improves timely reporting for early detection of infectious diseases. Syndromic surveillance makes this even faster because it points to signs of possible outbreak leading to early investigation. The International Health Regulations 2005 mandates all member states to develop, strengthen, and maintain core capacity for surveillance and response by June 2016. With no specific provision for funding, it is a challenge for low-resourced African countries to meet this deadline. It is equally a global concern because infectious diseases know no boundaries. As a way forward, this paper proposes the implementation of a call-in system of syndromic surveillance under which data collection is outsourced to a distributed group in the community and the data collected are analysed for outbreak detection. The system aims at improving data quality, coverage and representativeness while cutting cost and emphasizing operational simplicity and speed in early detection of outbreaks.