Using Grid Map for Outbreak Detection and Reporting System for Health Extension Workers in Ethiopia

Issue:  Currently there is no system that helps the health extension workers to report timely disease outbreaks that needs urgent response by higher officials and experts

 

Description: The grid map helps in indicating geographic location for events, and has been used in disease inspection, disease detection and outbreak emergency response.  The map covers the entire country at every one square kilometer; each square kilometer grid map has its own unique name derived from 5 English alphabets and it uses standard coordinate system universal transverse Mercator (UTM). The digitizing task of one by one km grids is made based on the Horizontal coordinate system named GCS_Adindan, and has Bounding coordinates Horizontal In decimal degrees West: 31.535448, East: 50.150943, North: 16.282265, South: 2.622924  and In projected or local coordinates Left: -300307.629300, Right: 1700106.118000, Top: 1800720.373800, Bottom: 295191.311000. A total of 2750000 grids are produced. 2.75 million Grids are labeled with unique five alphabetic letters and all the grid lines are converted to polygon shape file in the way to be result compatible with any other GIS software which uses Shape file format.

Lesson Learned: Tools that are easily adoptable for use are very much useful to facilitate the information flow from the lower level to the upper level. The success of the tools is quite related with its simplicity. As the health extension workers are very much overburden reporting tools that are simple and less time taking are used effectively.

Conclusion: the grid map is an easy way of reporting events from the lower health facility to the next level just by referring the five letter grid name in written or oval with the case symptoms.