First COVIDaction Applicant Funded via Data Challenge
Surgo Foundation is the first organization to receive funding through DFID’s COVIDaction Data Challenge. The award will promote data use across Africa to aid a more effective and targeted response to the pandemic. Surgo will benefit from a mix of technical assistance and £25,000 to support the last critical steps needed for its Africa Covid-19 Community Vulnerability Index (Africa CCVI).
Explore the index and learn more: https://precisionforcovid.org/africa
The Africa CCVI puts together data about Covid-19 and the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which shows the resilience of communities when they are facing stresses on health, disease outbreak, or natural disasters. The results highlight places and communities that would likely need more support and should be an indicator of where questions need to be asked to identify needs.
Underscoring the importance of DFID’s first investment in the COVIDaction Data Challenge, James Duddridge, the UK’s Minister for Africa, noted, “The extent of the impact of coronavirus in Africa is still unclear. Governments, NGOs and health workers need access to the right information so they can tackle the virus where there is a risk of it spreading and help save lives. We have so far committed £764 million of UK aid to help poorer countries tackle coronavirus, including through supporting innovative uses of data. It is only through global cooperation that we can end this pandemic and keep the whole world safe.”
The spread of Covid-19 is complex, and knowing how to react and limit vulnerability requires clear data to make precise decisions. Governments are working hard to try to prepare, but many communities are comparatively more vulnerable in terms of their ability to mitigate, treat, and delay transmission.
In addition to these complexities, Covid-19 data in Africa has not provided a true reflection of where this pandemic could have the greatest impact — partly due to low scale-up of testing and partly due to incomplete reporting. Addressing this need, “The Africa Covid-19 Community Vulnerability Index fills an information gap that has challenged the global development community,” said Magdalena Banasiak, Senior Innovation Adviser at DFID, who manages the COVIDaction programme.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, there are already well-documented health challenges related to Covid-19, including a lack of intensive care units. According to Tropical Medical Health, looking at Uganda specifically, there are only 55 intensive care unit beds to serve 40 million people, 80% of which are in the capital. Illustratively, the Africa CCVI presents an overview of districts in Uganda (and similar analysis for 47 other countries in Africa) and serves as a platform for actors to better understand risk factors that impact the country. The index includes seven specific risk themes, ranging from the state of health systems, which includes the lack of ICU capacity in the country, through to disease transmission risks, like population density.
Dr. Sema Sgaier, executive director of Surgo Foundation summed up the value of the index following notification of the COVIDaction award, stating that “the Africa CCVI shows us the different ways African regions can be vulnerable to Covid-19 beyond just mortality, giving us predictive power we’ve not had before. While it does not predict which regions are at risk of having outbreaks, it does predict whether a region can mitigate the health, economic, and social impacts of COVID-19 and the downstream consequences for which they should plan.”
At present, it assesses 751 regions in 48 countries on their vulnerability amid the COVID-19 outbreak and is intended to help governments, donor agencies, health officials, frontline organizations, and researchers develop targeted, more effective interventions to mitigate the health, economic, and social impact of Covid-19.
A range of use cases have been documented and are available for review on the Africa CCVI site. Future development of the index will focus on the incorporation of more localized data and open-sourcing the CCVI methodology for use at the subnational level. COVIDaction will continue to support the uptake of the index by national actors throughout Africa. We are working alongside a range to stakeholders, including the COVIDaction partner AfriLabs, to ensure adoption and use of the tool.
Highlighting the value of the index to innovators and technologist across Africa, Temitope Isedowo, the Director of Programmes at AfriLabs noted: “[AfriLabs believe[s] the importance of such an index as a starting point to leverage country-specific data sources and tools in national decision making, especially in critical times like the current COVID-19 pandemic, cannot be overemphasized. Our community of innovation stakeholders will find this platform very useful.”
COVIDaciton will build on this and other partnerships across Africa in collaboration with Surgo Foundation to drive a more effective and targeted response to the COVID-19.
Follow updates about the Africa CCVI using the #AfricaCCVI hashtag, and check out other coverage the Africa CCVI has received to date, including from The Economist, NPR, CNBC, Quartz, The Standard, Yahoo Finance, and other publications.
