In Tanzania, eHealth Africa hands over state-of-the-art Polio Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) to support the fight against polio

By Juliana Okoro

On Thursday, 13th October 2022, the Ministry of Health Tanzania commissioned the polio emergency operations center (PEOC) set up by eHealth Africa in Dodoma, Tanzania.

With support from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the PEOC supports the Ministry to facilitate collaboration and coordination of public health stakeholders within the country in the fight against the Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus 2 (cVDPV2) and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Over the years, Tanzania has made magnificent progress in eradicating polio, but with polio rising in neighboring countries, the need for further efforts to prevent cross-border epidemics has increased. The effect of the covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected the country’s vaccination program, including the coverage for polio vaccines. With the establishment of the Polio emergency operation centers, equipped with modern technology, coordination will be easier. The PEOC will serve as a central location for coordinating operations and providing tools and resources for the strategic management of public health emergencies. 

To ensure sustainability, e-health Africa handed over the center to the Ministry of Health, Tanzania to support their effort in the fight against polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases. The center will provide health data that will give the government information on any threats within their borders and those coming up in their neighboring borders. “The goal of the polio emergency operations center (PEOC) is to ensure you have the resources you need to fight and respond to outbreaks all in one place. Joint efforts of the government and partners will help to improve the quality of any response in Tanzania. It will function at this national level during emergencies and ensure proper response to other outbreaks beyond polio.” said Dr Delayo Zomahoun, GPEI Coordinator for Tanzania.

The growing cases of the Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus 2 (cVDPV2) in many African countries require focused efforts to establish Emergency Operating Centers to improve the coordination and coverage of vaccination efforts to tackle the spread of type 2 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2). eHealth Africa’s project manager Sodipe Oluwaseun said “In March, we came to Tanzania to support the setup of the EOC and outbreak response. 7 months later, we facilitated the setup of the polio EOC. We hope this EOC provides the platform to ensure no child is left behind in the fight against polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases. We thank the government of Tanzania for an enabling environment.”

Here are some pictures from the handover event in Dodoma, Tanzania. 

Abel Makubi, representing the Ministry of Health in Tanzania, opens the PEOC in the presence of partners

All stakeholders in the conference room, discussing with virtual participants

Permanent Secretary, Tanzanian Ministry of Health, Abel Makubi, giving a speech at the handover ceremony.

WHO Country Representative for Tanzania, Dr Zabulon Yoti giving a speech at the handover ceremony

eHealth Africa’s project manager, Oluwaseun sodipe presenting the worktools to the permanent secretary.

Presentation of worktools - 5 lenovo laptops and 4 smartphones.

Permanent Secretary, Tanzanian Ministry of Health, Abel Makubi (middle) and other dignitaries after the PEOC handover ceremony

BMGF Focal person for Tanzania, giving a speech at the handover ceremony

eHealth Africa’s project manager, Oluwaseun Sodipe giving his remark at the handover ceremony.

We gave back to our communities again!

Giving back to the community is one of the many ways eHealth Africa tries to improve the lives of people in the communities in which we live and work. This June we held two medical outreach events for our community service that served over 1000 people.

Our team members visited  Chirenchi and Dutse-Alhaji communities in Kano and Abuja, FCT., in collaboration with EHA Clinics. We provided free eye exams, basic lab testing, and pharmaceutical counseling to people in those communities. We also offered relevant family planning, water purification, and personal hygiene education.

Here are pictures from the events in Kano and Abuja, FCT.

eHealth Africa planted 500 trees for Earth Day

Last week, just in time for Earth Day 2022, our team in Kano and Abuja embarked on a “plant a tree” campaign. We believe that one of the most significant ways we can help to address the concerns of climate change is to plant trees. As an organization, while we strive to be more energy-efficient to reduce our carbon footprint, we also take other actions to improve the communities we work and live in. For this campaign, we took to some selected communities in Kano and Abuja to plant 500 trees, 300 in Kano, and 200 in Abuja.

About the “plant a tree” campaign, Dr. Kabir İbrahim Getso, Kano State Commissioner for Environment, had this to say, “The essence of Earth Day is to awaken our consciousness to create awareness to protect our environment and engage in practices that will ensure sustainable management of our environment. The very high temperatures we are experiencing and the flooding in Nigeria and around the world are some effects of climate change. Organizations and individuals need to join hands with the government to safeguard the environment and I would like to appreciate eHealth Africa for joining hands with the Kano State Ministry of this environment to carry out this tree planting exercise.”

Here are pictures from the plant a tree campaign in Kano and Abuja

We took our team bonding outside!

By Juliana Jacob

Nearly 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are denied basic drinking water supply. Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights, reflecting the fundamental nature of these basics in every person’s life.

One of the strategies we put in place to impact the communities we live and work in is our Community Development Initiative. Recently, we partnered with the REACH community health program of EHA Clinics to renovate 20 Boreholes across 10 LGAs of Kano state. While the project aims to make water available for the communities, we also strive to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number 6 “Clean water and sanitation”

We were excited to visit Sharifawa and Zangon Dakata communities in Gazewa and Ungogo LGAs respectively to launch the boreholes and spend time with the people of the host communities.

Departure time

The eHA and REACH team about to depart for the communities. Everyone was super excited and couldn’t wait to meet our hosts for the day.

Muhammed Mairogo, Community Head, Sharifawa Community, Gazawa giving a welcome address.

Mohammed Bello telling the community the reason for our visit.

L-R Bolanle, Ibrahim, Ayodeji, Ebi, Babatunde and Francisca at Sharifawa community

Group photo of the eHA and REACH team at Sharifawa community.

Photo with Bilyaminu M. Abubakar, Ward Head, Zango Dakata, Ungogo LGA, Kano.

eHealth Africa among winners in 2021 edition of the Wiki Loves Africa Photo Contest

By Oladipo Olurishe

2nd Place Winner Wiki Loves Africa Photo Contest 2021

Our submission to the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Photographic Competition came 2nd place out of over 8000 entries.

Wiki In Africa, the international organizers of the Wiki Loves Africa challenges the global photographic community each year to respond to a call for photographs of life in Africa along a specific theme. This year, the competition called for photographers to contribute images that visually interrogated the theme of Health + Wellness within the African context but looking at the positive aspects within that sector of African life.

The image which emerged as a global winner was shot at the Kano head office of eHealth Africa during a Malaria Microscopy Training conducted by our Laboratory team. The image was uploaded by Dr. Nirmal Ravi who leads the team and was present during the session.

eHA and Afrolynk co-host Meet Your Neighbors in Tech for Global Good

eHA and Afrolynk teamed up with Unicorn Workspaces to host a meetup that brought together the community of innovators that makes Berlin, Germany a hub for technology-driven social impact.

Approximately fifty attendees listened to talks related to different aspects of leveraging technology for social impact before getting to know one another during a networking session.

The speakers were Moses Acquah, the founder of Afrolynk; Sabine Claassen, a Senior UI/UX Designer at eHealth Africa; Dr. Seth Kofi Abrokwa from the Robert Koch Institute; and Vanessa von Frankenberg, a senior venture developer and project manager at Digital Health Factory.

See photos from the event below.

Dr. Seth Kofi Abrokwa discussing "Predictive Analysis in Digital Health Care"

Vanessa von Frankenberg of Digital Health Factory discussing "Innovative Ways to Use Digital Health for Global Good"

Sabine Claassen, Senior UI/UX Designer at eHA discussing "Problem-first Design"

Hosts, Jennifer Bencivenga and Sannssi Cisse

Moses Acquah, founder of Afrolynk, discussing "Understanding your Customer to Make an Ethical Viable Digital Business"

Our Iftar Celebration

eHealth Africa is a team of people from diverse cultures, educational backgrounds, and experiences, united by the desire to build stronger health systems across Africa.

One of our values at eHealth Africa is ownership—we work hard to become embedded in the fabric of the communities which we work in and we invest our time, ideas and resources to ensure that the quality of life in those communities is improved.

This week, our staff in Kano and Abuja hosted an Iftar celebration for members of neighboring communities. Iftar breaks the daylong fast that Muslims must observe during the month of Ramadan. eHA staff came together to distribute food packs and clothes to over 500 people in Kano and 200 people in Abuja. Our aim was to give back to the communities that we live and work in.

Here are pictures from the event in Kano. Ramadan Kareem!

eHA Staff at our Kano office preparing the Iftar packs

Lots of food and drinks to share

Iftar packs ready to go!

Some staff at our Kano office getting ready to distribute packs

Our Director, Finance and Administration joins the picture

Servers in line!!

The distribution begins in Kano

Calling our comrades to Iftar

The last few packs are distributed

A thumbs up for the eHA team

Zahir Baloum, Director, Finance and Administration and Hawa Kombian, Chief of Staff, grant an interview

Building Ecosystems that Drive Change

Our experience and track record working to implement projects across our focus areas have shown us that without a unified, collaborative approach, interventions tend to be ineffective and sometimes, inappropriate for the contexts that we work in. We know that solutions and systems are more impactful when they are built in proximity to the environments in which they are needed, and in partnership with stakeholders who have a close grasp of the challenges to be addressed.

Our goal is to build solutions that address local needs harnessing the power of technology and data. Therefore, we invest in growing the tech ecosystem and sharing our knowledge, lessons, and experience with our partners.
We host meetups and hackathons to create platforms for innovative organizations and individuals to share their work with the global tech community and to support governments with real, context-appropriate solutions to their development challenges. Recently, our GRID3 team partnered with CoLab Innovation Hub, the Kaduna State Bureau of Statistics (KDBS), the Kaduna State Budget and Planning Commission, the Kaduna State Government, and Kaduna ICT Hub to hold KadHack2018, a first of its kind hackathon aimed at providing software developers and stakeholders in the technology sector to engage the Kaduna state government and gain firsthand insight into the challenges in the Education and Health sectors, in order to come up with software prototypes that could be further developed to solve problems within those sectors.

Currently, most learning and education in Nigeria’s tech field are driven by the individuals themselves using resources, which are often external and not based on local challenges. An ecosystem should be self-sufficient. This means that members of the ecosystem should be able to learn, grow, earn and contribute to building the ecosystem. To this end, eHealth Africa is interested in further building the tech ecosystem in Kano State as a pipeline for developing tech talent to build solutions for the local context. Our software team is hosting its March tech meetup on the 30th of March, 2018 at the eHA Kano Campus by 12 pm. The event will feature in-depth knowledge sharing sessions with our team using real, relatable challenges and practical solutions. Read about our last meetups in Berlin and Kano.

If you are interested in gaining more knowledge to build software solutions that address challenges in health, education, and agriculture, then, register to attend the event here.