Country Programs and Partnerships in Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR)

The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) includes 46 Member States. Forty-three of the 46 countries have adopted IDSR as a framework for strengthening their national disease surveillance and response systems.

Implementation of IDSR in a country begins with an assessment of the country’s national surveillance system guided by a jointly developed WHO-CDC protocol. National capacities for surveillance, laboratory confirmation, and epidemic preparedness and response are assessed at all levels of the country’s health system. The country’s Ministry of Health uses these assessment results to develop a plan of action that integrates existing and expected resources and activities to achieve the benefits of a comprehensive public health surveillance and response system.

The activities of the plan of action involve changes at the central, provincial, district, and health facility levels of the health system. Often, the first activity is the adaptation of WHO/CDC generic IDSR Technical Guidelines and other tools.

In IDSR, surveillance activities and resources are coordinated and streamlined with the goal of using health data for public health action. Key strategy areas include:

• Surveillance system strengthening,
• Laboratory strengthening,
• Training and capacity development,
• Monitoring and evaluation, and
• Advocacy.

IDSR Partners

To leverage resources and improve efficiencies in public health outputs, IDSR works in partnership with many internal and external international organizations who share a common vision of improving disease detection and response. Partners include:

• WHO African Regional Office (AFRO)
  • Immunization and Vaccine Development (IVD)
  • Tuberculosis (TUB)
  • Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD)
  • Non Communicable Disease ( NCD)
  • Child and Adolescent Health (CAH)
  • HIV/AIDS (RPA)
  • Malaria Control (MAL)
• United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • USAID Africa Bureau
  • Africa’s Health in 2010 Project
  • African Strategies for Health
• Ministries of Health throughout Africa
• AFENET