Dakar hosts regional effort to enhance polio data quality across africa

Dakar – Over 80 experts from 19 African nations have converged in Dakar this week, collaborating to elevate the quality, consistency, and practical application of data vital for polio surveillance and outbreak response. This crucial undertaking aims to strengthen disease detection, inform vaccination campaigns, and ultimately safeguard children from polio throughout the African Region.

This significant initiative forms part of the Data Quality Assessment and Polio Workstream Coordination Workshop, an event orchestrated by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) Polio Eradication Programme (PEP), running from June 8 to 19, 2026.

Bringing together representatives from national Ministries of Health, national polio reference laboratories, WHO country offices, WHO AFRO, and WHO Headquarters, the workshop is dedicated to fortifying the data systems that underpin polio surveillance, outbreak responses, and evidence-based decision-making across the entire African continent.

Participants are rigorously evaluating data quality across several core components of the polio program. This includes surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), environmental monitoring, laboratory surveillance, electronic surveillance systems, and supplementary immunization activities (SIAs). They are also meticulously dissecting key challenges that impact data quality, with the goal of pinpointing persistent obstacles and formulating practical solutions to ensure the consistent and timely transmission of dependable data.

A practical segment of the workshop incorporates a series of hands-on sessions, utilizing digital tools and solutions developed by the regional team. This approach aims to foster the widespread adoption of data-centric methodologies at all operational levels. Discussions also delve into the effective utilization and ongoing maintenance of various digital platforms essential for robust information systems, guaranteeing prompt data collection, analysis, reporting, and informed decision-making.

The workshop’s official opening was led by Dr. Yao N’da Konan Michel, the WHO Representative in Senegal. In his opening remarks, Dr. Yao extended profound appreciation to the Government and Ministry of Health of Senegal for their hospitality in hosting this pivotal gathering in Dakar. He also commended Senegal’s impressive track record in combating infectious diseases regionally.

Dr. Yao underscored that while the WHO African Region achieved a historic milestone in 2020 by being certified free of indigenous wild poliovirus, the enduring threat posed by circulating variant polioviruses necessitates unwavering vigilance for polio eradication. He emphasized the critical importance of high-quality surveillance, swift outbreak responses, effective vaccination drives, and the capacity to identify and address immunity gaps wherever they arise. At the core of these endeavors, he noted, lies a resilient digital ecosystem supported by robust data governance.

Following the opening ceremony, Mr. Kebba Touray, who leads the Data and Information Management Team for the Polio Eradication Programme, presented the workshop’s objectives and methodology. He articulated that this workshop embodies a shared commitment to preserving and enhancing the program’s rich legacy in data management, thereby sustainably strengthening public health surveillance systems across Africa. He highlighted that this advanced system owes its development to the sustained commitment and leadership demonstrated by the WHO, several years of targeted funding from the Gates Foundation, and the technical support from other dedicated partners.

Mr. Touray urged attendees to leverage the two-week intensive program to establish robust mechanisms capable of bridging critical data quality deficiencies across all program workstreams. He cautioned that a failure to make progress in this area would complicate the assessment of surveillance sensitivity, hinder the monitoring of SIA quality, impede the analysis of outbreak response performance, and make it difficult to target risk-based interventions. Such a scenario, he concluded, would jeopardize the significant strides made towards polio eradication in the Region.