The RVC e-Media Unit has been collaborating with a number of partners in East Africa including the University of Nairobi Veterinary School, the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance in Tanzania and the NGO Vetaid. This initiative draws upon these existing partnerships in order to strengthen North – South linkages and help to raise awareness amongst veterinary students in both the UK and Kenya of international issues of mutual concern. The importance of this approach was highlighted by the OIE at a major conference in October 2009 entitled evolving veterinary education for a safer world.
The RVC is a partner in the 3 year DFID funded “Students as Global Citizens” project led by the Development Education Research Centre in the Institute of Education. It has recently secured funding from DFID’s Development Awareness Fund to develop and evaluate methods to embed development education principles within degree courses on pharmacy, veterinary science, and human health. The initiative described here is part of this approach which is intended to introduce a series of scenario based directed learning sessions into the Year 2 veterinary curriculum.
The project aims to enhance the appreciation of international development by exploring and contrasting issues related to livestock and health in both East Africa and the UK. This is intended to assist RVC and Kenyan veterinary students identify with their counterparts and emphasize the common professional interests and values that exist. This will be achieved through a number of steps described below which integrate some of the latest technologies such as videocasting with more traditional students exchanges.
• An initial exploratory visit by RVC recent graduate to Kenya and Tanzania in November 2009. The UK vet will work with a recent veterinary graduate from the Nairobi veterinary school to develop links with the veterinary school and Vetaid;
• In particular they will work with Vetaid vets, community animal health workers and students to record and publish a series of audio and videocasts describing issues of local and national relevance;
• Adaption of video material collected in the field to create a series of 6 directed learning sessions for the RVC Development Awareness session for second year veterinary students in 2010, drawing parallels and comparisons between veterinary practice in the UK and in the developing world;
• To provide recording equipment, training and support for Kenyan vets to record, edit and publish their own podcasts and videocasts on topics of local relevance. As part of this initiative, a Kenyan veterinary graduate will make a two week visit to the Royal Veterinary College in London, in order to develop their technical skills and record videocasts of relevant livestock health issues in the UK;
• To establish a protocol for future student educational exchanges including the potential for RVC students to undertake either preclinical or clinical Extra Mural Studies placements with Vetaid and other partners in East Africa.
The first stage of the project involve a 4 week visit by a recent RVC graduate, Beverley Panto to East Africa. You can follow her progress through her own blog at : http://www.africabev.blogspot.com/
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Mobile Disease Surveillance Project
Mobile technologies are now increasingly being used across Africa for everything from phone to SMS texting. This is associated with widespread access to affordable mobile networks and handsets. In many cases, this technology has overtaken the use of landline phones, radio and internet for communication in rural communities. Innovative examples of the potential of these mobile devices include the potential to make small SMS payments, receiving text alerts of market prices or receiving medication reminders for TB treatment. Nevertheless, their use in disease surveillance is limited.
In general there are three types of mobile technology applications to disease alerts and surveillance. The first relies on either telephoning or sending of SMS messages by field operatives to a central unit. This is particularly useful for disease alerts to observations made in the field or primary health care centre. They are not particularly useful for surveillance as such messages are often not recorded in standard and verifiable formats. The second category combines the use of a digital pen to record observations on specially designed paper form and then transmitting such information via either a mobile telephone or laptop to central database on a server. This is being tested for animal health surveillance in several SADC countries including Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. The third and emerging system is one that uses the Google-Android Open source Data Kit (ODK) mobile telephones to generate forms and transmit information to a database on a server. The second and third systems have the advantage of collecting data that can be verified and analysed by an expert at a distance. Field data can be geo-referenced and depending on the quality of the mobile telephone they can be accompanied by photographed images.
The recent development and access to second generation mobile devices, such as the ODK system, offers significant new opportunities for disease surveillance and prevention. The handsets now have accurate geo spatial sensing, which enables accurate tracking of location and linking to text, image and data. The potential to insert memory cards means that the devices can temporarily capture data off line where a network is poor. This additional memory means that the handsets can be populated with appropriate disease extensions and support material in video, audio and textual format which the operator can refer to in the field.
There are already Open Source tools available for the Android platform which can be relatively simply be engineered to enable disease data collection. Data entry can be done using a pen device, a keypad or touch screen and GPS settings are captured automatically. This data can then be transmitted through a GPRS or low bandwidth network to a central server where it can be analysed, mapped and modelled almost immediately after the data has been collected. The field worker can then be referred to information on the handset memory in the local language for example with advice on suitable biosecurity measure to adopt.
Thus the mobile technologies are serving to overcome the constraints of poor physical infrastructure in Africa and Asia by real-time transmission of clinical observations at the point of disease outbreak (be it in communities, health facilities, on farm or in wildlife) to experts at district, provincial or national headquarters and the feed back (i.e. response) from such expertise to the point of outbreak, also in near real-time. It is a technical empowerment of the primary health (human or animal) responders, who in Africa are invariably sub-professional or even auxiliary cadres. This is a clear example of technology that is fit for the purpose.
In general there are three types of mobile technology applications to disease alerts and surveillance. The first relies on either telephoning or sending of SMS messages by field operatives to a central unit. This is particularly useful for disease alerts to observations made in the field or primary health care centre. They are not particularly useful for surveillance as such messages are often not recorded in standard and verifiable formats. The second category combines the use of a digital pen to record observations on specially designed paper form and then transmitting such information via either a mobile telephone or laptop to central database on a server. This is being tested for animal health surveillance in several SADC countries including Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. The third and emerging system is one that uses the Google-Android Open source Data Kit (ODK) mobile telephones to generate forms and transmit information to a database on a server. The second and third systems have the advantage of collecting data that can be verified and analysed by an expert at a distance. Field data can be geo-referenced and depending on the quality of the mobile telephone they can be accompanied by photographed images.
The recent development and access to second generation mobile devices, such as the ODK system, offers significant new opportunities for disease surveillance and prevention. The handsets now have accurate geo spatial sensing, which enables accurate tracking of location and linking to text, image and data. The potential to insert memory cards means that the devices can temporarily capture data off line where a network is poor. This additional memory means that the handsets can be populated with appropriate disease extensions and support material in video, audio and textual format which the operator can refer to in the field.
There are already Open Source tools available for the Android platform which can be relatively simply be engineered to enable disease data collection. Data entry can be done using a pen device, a keypad or touch screen and GPS settings are captured automatically. This data can then be transmitted through a GPRS or low bandwidth network to a central server where it can be analysed, mapped and modelled almost immediately after the data has been collected. The field worker can then be referred to information on the handset memory in the local language for example with advice on suitable biosecurity measure to adopt.
Thus the mobile technologies are serving to overcome the constraints of poor physical infrastructure in Africa and Asia by real-time transmission of clinical observations at the point of disease outbreak (be it in communities, health facilities, on farm or in wildlife) to experts at district, provincial or national headquarters and the feed back (i.e. response) from such expertise to the point of outbreak, also in near real-time. It is a technical empowerment of the primary health (human or animal) responders, who in Africa are invariably sub-professional or even auxiliary cadres. This is a clear example of technology that is fit for the purpose.
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