Abstract
Nigeria established Public Health Emergency Operations Centers (PHEOCs) across its 36 sub-national units to prepare, respond and recover from public health emergencies. PHEOCs require timely access to data to support disease detection, notification and confirmation. But delayed data has led to delayed actions by PHEOC before and during an outbreak. This study identified the challenges to data production and use to support decision-making during surveillance and disease outbreaks. We deployed a participatory approach to understand the challenges of data for action among PHEOC actors during disease outbreaks. A participatory workshop session was held with PHEOC actors in Kano and Kebbi states. We conducted a content analysis by coding deductively and presented the findings in themes. The range for detecting a disease outbreak was 1 – 28 days. The time to notification ranged from 1 to 2 days. Lassa fever had the longest time to detection of 28 days, while cholera had the shortest (1 day). The use of paper and technology-based reporting tools contributed to delays in outbreak detection, notification and confirmation of a suspected case. So was the use of numerous reporting tools, low capacity for case identification, insecurity and ill-equipped laboratories. We recommended capacity building for PHEOC actors, the automation and integration of data gathering and analysis structure into PHEOCs. These proposed interventions will improve case identification, data management, automation and integration of disease reporting systems, to permit improved data visibility, analysis and evaluation to promote timely data gathering and usage in PHEOCs.
Keywords