Isolate, trace and respond: How a new emergency operations centre has improved outbreak response in Kebbi

Enrolling community members as Volunteer Community Mobilizers (VCMs) dramatically increases the effectiveness of public health campaigns. In Nigeria, the Jigawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency has made progress with regard to immunization rates through its health ambassador program. The VCMs act as links between the localities and the public health services, ensuring that each that child receives vaccinations on schedule. The state has also used VCMs to increase the frequency of home visits and outreach efforts.

Cold storage supply chains improve the reliability of vaccine delivery. In Nigeria’s Kano State, the establishment of zonal cold stores has increased immunization coverage. Local nodes equipped with solar powered refrigeration provide storage for vaccines, which are then delivered to supply smaller health centers in the area. The initiative came from a partnership between the Nigerian state and nonprofits, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

For disease eradication campaigns to succeed, public health officials need to interact with the public. In Pakistan, the front line against polio is comprised of women who reach out to directly to families with young children, often at major transportation centers. The women engage in this type of public health awareness as a way to navigate around extremist violence and the adverse consequences of a US fake vaccination campaign. The women focus on building rapport with families, and then administering vaccines.

Local agencies tasked with controlling disease-spreading organisms are releasing sterile male mosquitoes to help reduce the pest’s population and prevent the spread of dengue. This strategy has decreased the mosquito population by about 82% in parts of Southern California, marking the first time in eight years that the population has declined instead of increased.

Teams of Community Direct Distributors (CDD) are leading drug distribution campaigns to prevent and eliminate neglected tropical diseases in hard-to-reach, rural areas. These CDDs are members of the community they serve and are trained to educate the locals on disease prevention and administer the drugs themselves. With the CDDs’ help, several states have already eliminated some diseases and greatly reduced the spread of others.

Since 2017, the Defeat TB (tuberculosis) program supported by USAID introduced a patient contact tracing program in Uganda wherein health workers and facilitators have been trained to trace a patient with multidrug-resistant TB back to their community to screen family members, conduct tests, and refer them for Xrays or treatment if needed. Introduced in the Mulago referral hospital, the program has since expanded to 16 other centers. Along with counseling, follow-ups, and provision of food assistance, it has helped increase the TB detection and treatment rate over the years.

In March when fewer than 100 coronavirus infections had been found in the U.K, researchers in Cambridge decided to begin sequencing coronavirus samples as part of an "unparalleled surveillance system for Covid" that could identify and track possible mutations or the virus. This effort – which involves labs sending leftover material from testing swabs to the researcher's genomics lab where they are stored and analyzed – has culminated in hundreds of thousands of genome sequences and "sounded an alarm for the world" about the new fast-spreading variant.

When a smallpox outbreak was deemed to be a likelihood in New York City in 1947, the city’s health commissioner rapidly launched a vaccination campaign that leveraged internal collaboration, consistent and transparent communication, and contact tracing. The effort culminated in more than six million people receiving vaccination in under a month, and only 12 infections and two deaths total. While this "public health triumph" hold lessons for the current COVID-19 pandemic, experts caution, “It’s almost inconceivable that we’re going to be able to do something similar as rapidly and as effectively.”

Contact tracing, the act of identifying the people that someone infected with COVID-19 has come into contact with to reduce transmission, is front and center for Salt Lake City County’s Infectious Disease and Epidemiology bureaus, which have increased staff by 100 people to adapt to rising need. As opposed to what some deem invasive technology used to do contact tracing in other countries, Salt Lake City is relying on an all-hands-on-deck surveillance effort through questioning of individuals with the goal of reducing spread as much as possible.

In early January, doctors at UW Medical Center began preparing for a coronavirus outbreak by transforming a research lab into a screening center for coronavirus that delivers results within a day. Now, coupled with a mobile clinic that allows for people to be tested from within the confines of their cars, the city has been able to test a large volume of people more safely than if they were being tested from within a hospital.