Speakers at the Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund (NSSF) fire chat on vaccine uptake have canvased for the use of technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive vaccine uptake in Africa.
The speakers drawn from different walks of life spoke on Thursday during the NSSF fire chat webinar with the theme: “Innovating for Healthcare in Africa: Using AI and Tech to Drive Vaccine Uptake.
The General Manager/ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) NSSF, Dr. Fejiro Chinye- Nwoko, in her remarks, said that as the world advances in an Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, the advantages of these innovations must reach every part of the globe, especially Africa.
Chinye- Nwoko said that vaccination is one of the most impactful and cost-efficient public health interventions known to prevent mortality and reduce morbidity.
According to her, despite increased global vaccination coverage, Africa is still lagging.
“This is due in part to the low vaccine production rate on the continent itself,” Chinye-Nwoko said.
The CEO said that there was an urgent need for African countries to develop strategies that effectively address these limitations in vaccination uptake and coverage to achieve a reduction of vaccine preventable diseases.
She noted that AI could help in the conversation on vaccine production in the African continent.
Also speaking, Cyril Seck, Strategy Advisor, Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC), said that digitising healthcare in Africa would require focus on the patients.
Seck said that one of the roles of the Africa CDC was to strengthen member states workforce development and innovation.
According to him, it is important to encourage the emergence of the adoption of digital innovations aimed at improving health systems and outcomes.
He explained that to digitise key elements of health systems would require the enablement of a more interconnected, data driven approach.
He noted that the digitisation of the Primary Health Care centers was critical, adding that the diversity of apps and programmes need to be more coordinated.
He said that there was the need to align the many stakeholders available in the healthcare space in Africa to leapfrog digital innovations to meet the healthcare needs of Africa.
In his intervention, the Ekiti State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Oyebanji Filani, noted that aggressive work has been done by the state in fighting vaccine hesitancy.
Filani said that vaccine hesitancy is made worse by what he described as the dark side of social media.
He said that to tackle misinformation of vaccine uptake in the state, the ministry introduced media monitoring outreach to scout for misleading information on vaccine in Ekiti.
He added that religious and traditional leaders were admonished to speak to their subjects on the importance of vaccine.
He advised healthcare workers not to refuse anyone vaccine on the guise that they came on a date that is not meant for vaccination.
He said that there was the need to improve the attitude of healthcare workers in the state that were in charge of delivering vaccines.
Also speaking, Dr Lawal Bakare, CEO, Epid Alert, said that Epid Alert is big in using easy to adapt technologies, adding that sometimes they deploy offline systems, guided by GPS.
In her contributions, Ana Fernandes del Rio, Principal Data Scientist, Causal Foundry, said that her organisation builds data centric digital solutions.
Rio said that digital tools need to be used for the end users, adding that the digital tools have regular information on what is going on.
Also Dr. Chioma Nwakanma Akanno, Founder, Medically Speaking Services/ Executive Director, SMILE WITH ME Foundation, said that one of the beautiful things in data is that it helps you have tailored made strategies that also applies to health outcomes.
Akanno said that every other vaccinations that we have had and still having in Nigeria is not been made easy by the information and dissemination we have been seeing.
According to her, people have general distrust for the system.
She said that the speed of social media can be a blessing and a curse , adding that it’s impact could be felt not just in vaccines, but in every other aspects of health.
With regards to health messaging, Akanno said that all hands must be on deck with the proper constitution of stakeholders engagement.
“We need to empower every stakeholder, collaborate with key influencers.
“If we must combat vaccine hesitancy ànd increase vaccine uptake; we need to be very strategic in our messaging.
“And you cannot be strategic if you have no data, no messaging.
“Our messaging needs to be very tailored: strategic content dissemination is very key as regards vaccination.
“First go to the people, find out and feel their pulses, and that is through research, and data is going to be very important,” Akanno said.
The webinar was well attended by numerous persons who agreed that technology and AI, indeed can be of imense help in upscalling vaccine uptake in the country.
