Advocacy Week in Senegal for the establishment of Healthsites
For the start of the pilot phase of the Healthsites project in Saint Louis of Senegal , a series of meetings, with the Health actors, was conducted in the period from 09 to 16 April 2019 by Mark Herringer , leader of the Healthsites project and of Mohamet Lamine NDIAYE from the OpenStreetMap Senegal community .
On Wednesday, April 10, 2019, our first meeting was with our colleague Ahmadou Dicko of Humanitarian Data Exchange, where we discussed the schedule of visits and scheduled interviews for the week.
We went to PATH Senegal for the monthly meeting "Cafe Sante". The Digital Health Atlas and The Global Health Sites Mapping Project were presented to the group which included representatives from Digital Square, PATH, IT4LIFE and AMREF Health Africa.
After the presentation of Healthsites, a series of questions and answers showed the interest shown by the actors for the implementation of a shared system consolidating the data of health institutions. It was confirmed that the Healthsites.io service was needed in Senegal and in the West Africa sub-region in general. At the end of this meeting, the Digital Square organizations agreed to accompany the project with their orientations, their suggestions and their feedback during the various phases of implementation in Senegal.
On Thursday, April 11, 2019, we met Dr. Ibrahima Dia, Head of the Department of Digital Health at the Ministry of Health.
After a presentation from Healthsites, we discussed the contribution that such a tool could make to the Ministry of Health, in the presence of the GIS manager, Ms. Daba Ndour. Thus, more technical issues were discussed with the GIS manager, including the nature of the ODbL license, the data recipients of open health facilities and the technology used to disseminate them.
Once these questions are removed, another meeting is agreed with Daba Ndour to see the different projects in the field of Digital Health initiated by the Ministry of Health and see to what extent the project Healthsites could collaborate for the implementation of these initiatives and bring more value through its expertise and experience.
For an involvement of the student community, appointment was made with Mrs. Diene Aminata Niang, Director of the Institute of Territorial Governance ( IGT ) and head of the Geography Laboratory of Health Department of Geography at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences ( FSLH ) of the University Cheikh Anta Diop ( UCAD ) Dakar on Friday, April 12, 2019 at 10am in the said laboratory.
In the discussions, once the presentation was finished, we had the agreement in principle on the part of Mrs. Diène to support the project at the university level with the contribution of the students in the different phases and the implementation. relationship with resource persons at the pilot project area. Thus the contacts of Mrs. Fatou Maria Dramé of the University Gaston Berger ( UGB ) we were given to discuss with her for a facilitation at the level of the UGB and the person of the professor Dah Dieng of the Geography UFR has been recommended for further activities. In the same vein, she took the initiative to defend the project at the Ministry of Health where Mr Ibrahima Diaand Daba Ndour are members of the Geography Laboratory of Health and these former students.
It should also be noted that at the closing of the #RCcodeathon Senegalese Red Cross in partnership with the Belgian Red Cross and the Norwegian Red Cross, on Saturday, April 13, 2019, a meeting with Mr Babacar Badiane , head of organizations at the Cross Senegalese Red resulted in a sending of project documentation at the level of his email box for advocacy at the level of the head of its structure for their involvement but also Red Cross volunteers present throughout the territory national.
An important meeting with Dr. Labaly Toure structure Geomatica , one of the project partners Healthsites at Saint Louis, was held Monday, April 15 at Café Lulu to discuss organizational and logistical aspects of the project in order to harmonization of approaches to the project implementation methodology during its pilot phase.
Thus, a meeting, in July for the launch of the project , is planned for the sensitization of the actors of the Health and the partners of the project. And an agenda has been set up by June for tasks related to the realization of this activity.
In the aftermath, a working meeting with Ms. Aminata Gueye , the regional head of the International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC ) GIS in their Dakar offices, was held in the afternoon. During this working session, which was attended by Hyacinthe Sambou , Assistant to the GIS Manager, and Aminata Sarr , ICRC Co-operation Officer, several topics were discussed in turn, particularly with regard to the use of data. in the humanitarian context in Senegal and in the West African sub-region in general, the interoperability of data with the HDX approachfor the sharing of data and finally the involvement of the volunteers of the Senegalese Red Cross . The organization of a meeting with the national coordinator of the Senegalese Red Cross was retained with Aminata Sarr for a presentation of the project and the support that could bring the Red Cross by these volunteers but also the facilities that Healthsites brings in terms of sharing health information and the realization of the Sanitary Card of Senegal.
Finally, the last day of this week began with a meeting with Maguette Thioro Ndong, Technical Advisor at PATH, to discuss how a health data administrator from the Ministry of Health can use " Digital Health Atlas " to discover the Healthsites service with the aim of strengthening health information systems.
Once the meeting ended, a debriefing session of the week was held to see the various observations and suggestions received but also to talk about the next activities by the month of June to prepare the pilot phase of the project Healthsites to Saint Louis of Senegal.
