Project News

Mr. Tambara (Senior Representative, JICA Kenya Office), Mr. Kinyangi (Programme Officer, JICA Kenya Office), Ms. Toda (JICA Expert), and Dr. Njeru (Head, Disease Surveillance and Response Unit, Ministry of Health) met with Mr. Macharia (Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Health) to report on the progress and achievements of mSOS. mSOS (mobile SMS-based disease outbreak alert system) is one of the activities in the SATREPS project in Kenya. It is a mobile phone based SMS reporting system where health workers report suspected cases of immediately reportable diseases to sub-county, County, and national surveillance coordinators on a real-time basis.

Dr. Njeru reported on the progress on mSOS reporting system, including the results of the pilot implementation in 2 counties, and future plans to scale-up mSOS. Mr. Tambara emphasized that the Ministry of Health should lead the activities on the scale-up of mSOS. Ms. Toda explained that the scale-up plans include integrating mSOS into the existing national health reporting system (DHIS2) and into the proposed Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) within the Ministry of Health.

Mr. Macharia expressed his appreciation to the Government of Japan and JICA. He stated that mSOS would be an important tool to save lives. Dr. Njeru noted that mSOS would be expanded as an event-based notification tool for not only communicable diseases but also for events that would be concerns to national security, such as floods, food poisoning, and terrorist attacks. He also noted that mSOS was included as one of the innovations in the CS' Performance Contract in 2015/16, which is a contract between the Cabinet Secretary and the President of Kenya.

The report on the mSOS Stakeholders' Meeting held on June 5, 2015 was handed over from JICA to the Ministry of Health. It was confirmed that JICA and the Ministry of Health would continue to collaborate further to advance Kenyan people's health.