FAO supports effective and timely response to disease threats in Ghana
Refresher training on disease surveillance and reporting, using the FAO Event Mobile Application surveillance tool to reinforce its use at national level.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Veterinary Service Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture of Ghana conducted a three-day refresher training workshop to institutionalize and integrate the use of the Event Mobile Application (EMA-i) into the Veterinary Service Directorate reporting system countrywide.
With funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under their Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) portfolio, the training targeted 43 frontline EMA-i users coming from the central, regional and district levels of the Veterinary Service Directorate (VSD), who are engaged in animal surveillance reporting. Additionally, some selected community animal health workers (CAHWS) trained on EMA-i, were part of the workshop to integrate the CAHWS into the VSD animal surveillance system.
At the opening ceremony, the FAO Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) team leader for Ghana, Garba Maina Ahmed, said that “This is an important refresher training which is a milestone of the EMA-i in Ghana as the country had a pilot in 2019 in selected districts with 31 users, but reporting started dropping after the pilot phase”.
In his opening address, Patrick Abakeh, the Chief Veterinary Officer for Ghana said that "The explanation for the decrease in EMA-i reporting has been, access to the internet services, the retirement of some Regional Veterinary Officers and lack of oversight in monitoring user activity.
EMA-i surveillance system in place in Ghana
Prior to the pilot implementation of the Event Mobile application in the country, the main type of disease reporting system in Ghana was paper-based reporting, using up to 15 different reporting formats, referred to as VF1-VF15. However, with this paper-based reporting system, Ghana was experiencing delays in
reporting and was not properly and timely reporting animal diseases to the VSD headquarters in Accra.
In 2018, the requirements for customization of the EMA-i tool were successfully adapted to the national context and in February 2019, a pilot test of EMA-i was conducted in 21 districts involving 31 users in three regions of Ghana. This was to test the tool prior to its full-scale deployment in the country. Internet packages were made available for the first six months, as well as other tools needed to use EMA-i, such as android phones, desktop computers and internet bundles. However, while initially there was an increase in the volume of reports, after the initial six months, the project team noticed a decrease in the volume of reports.
The explanation for the decline in animal disease reporting, using the EMA-i seems to be related to the mobility or turnover of users, the lack of Internet services, the retirement of some Regional Veterinary Officers who were trained, and the lack of oversight in tracking user activity and validating disease event reports.
Due to this decrease in reporting and for a successful and fruitful implementation of the tool, this refresher training workshop will come to improve the integration of the EMA-i tool into the country's reporting system and enhance timely animal disease reports. It will also be an opportunity for the officials who accept reports from the field to get up to speed with the new features the Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i), a database developed by FAO where the information is safely stored and processed for country use.