Abstract
BackgroundAFP is a rare syndrome and serves as a proxy for poliomyelitis. The main objective of AFP surveillance is to detect circulating wild polio virus and provide data for developing effective prevention and control strategies as well planning and decision making. Bikita district failed to detect a case for the past two years.FindingsA total of 31 health workers from 14 health centres were interviewed. Health worker knowledge on AFP was low in Bikita. The system was acceptable, flexible, and representative but not stable and not sensitive since it missed1 AFP case. The system was not useful to the district since data collected was not locally used in anyway. The cost of running the system was high. The district had no adequate resources to run the system. Reasons for not reporting cases was that the mothers were not bringing children with AFP and ignorance of health workers on syndromes captured under AFP.ConclusionHealth worker’s knowledge on AFP was low and all interviewed workers needed training surveillance. The system was found to be flexible but unacceptable. Reasons for failure to detect AFP cases could be, no cases reporting to the centres, lack of knowledge on health workers hence failure to recognise symptoms, high staff turnover.
Highlights
Surveillance is defined as ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and the distribution to those who need to know [1]
Reasons for failure to detect Acute flaccid Paralysis (AFP) cases could be, no cases reporting to the centres, lack of knowledge on health workers failure to recognise symptoms, high staff turnover
Records of patients 0–14 years who were admitted at the hospital were reviewed to check on how many AFP cases were seen how many were captured by the surveillance system and how many were missed
Summary
Surveillance is defined as ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and the distribution to those who need to know [1]. This means the dissemination of information that results from properly executed surveillance to those who plan public health programmes, to those who develop local, regional, national and international policies, to those who implement intervention and carry out public health action, to the public who need to have information in order to evaluate public health practice, and to those who need the information for personal action for their health and well being [1]. The main objective of AFP surveillance is to detect circulating wild polio virus and provide data for developing effective prevention and control strategies as well planning and decision making. Bikita district failed to detect a case for the past two years
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