Epidemics begin and end in communities.
Vigilance is required across the whole of society to combat the spread of potentially deadly diseases. Where systems depend on health facilities alone to spot outbreaks, all too often this results in outbreaks that escalate to become public health emergencies.
In Chad, TDDA helped the government design and put in place the foundations for a more effective surveillance system built around community.
This case study provides details of our 2022 Community-Based Surveillance pilot in Guélendeng district, where we worked alongside the Ministry of Health, provincial and district health teams and community health volunteers.
Learn more about what steps we took and why; some highly encouraging results; our analysis of the potential for CBS to be rolled out across the country; plus observations on the challenges of implementing CBS everywhere.
Carmen also distills what we have learned from the pilot in this short interview.