Is data integration the answer to eliminating trachoma in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia has almost half of the world’s trachoma burden, with 76.2 million people needing health interventions. Sightsavers is supporting the country’s ministry of health in its efforts to eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including trachoma, by integrating data to deliver more effective healthcare.

Biruck Kebede, who leads Sightsavers’ NTD work in Ethiopia, explains how data can help to eliminate diseases.

What has Sightsavers done to support Ethiopia’s ministry of health?

Ethiopia is leading the way on establishing an integrated NTD database (access acquired through the ministry). We have supported the ministry of health to integrate NTD data into the national health information system and bring critical NTD data together into a single comprehensive source, which is accessible by stakeholders at national, regional, and even global levels.

First, like in many countries, NTD datasets were stored in separate places, and so there wasn’t a full picture of the country’s NTD-related health and interventions in one place. Datasets from work such as mass drug administration (MDA) campaigns, which treat millions of people for trachoma each year, and impact surveys, which assess where trachoma remains a public health problem after MDA has been carried out, were managed on different platforms. This made it extremely complex for programme managers to provide a comprehensive overview of the NTD situation to key stakeholders, such as high-level officials, because they had to merge data from multiple data sources. Additionally, the data from each activity was not combined with previous data to identify trends over time. Now that all NTD programmatic data across multiple years is accessible in a single national database, it’s easier for key stakeholders to monitor and correctly interpret.

Second, survey data was often stored in editable formats such as Excel or Word, where data was at risk of being incorrectly edited, and multiple versions were often created. At worst, it was at risk of being deleted and lost. Now, programme managers can access accurate NTD survey data in the database, and so there is only one, standardised version of the data that they know they can rely on.

We have worked to make this database a useful and attractive resource for all stakeholders and have also fed in other data important to NTDs, including mWater, WHO ESPEN, Tropical Data and NTDeliver. Integration of these datasets ensures that valuable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), treatment and survey forecasting, prevalence survey and drug procurement data can be viewed together. We hope that equipping this system with these powerful tools will encourage all stakeholders to use it, and to input their data into the database going forward.

In these ways, the single platform will allow the ministry and other actors to confidently look at the full picture with different datasets together to determine – with relative ease and speed – what kinds of resources are needed and where they are needed as a priority.