Dakar – This week, over 80 specialists representing 19 African nations gathered in Dakar, Senegal, united by a common mission: to elevate the quality, consistency, and application of data pertinent to polio surveillance and outbreak response. This collaborative effort marks a vital step toward enhancing disease detection, guiding immunization drives, and ultimately safeguarding children across the entire African Region from poliomyelitis.

The initiative is part of the Polio Data Quality Assessment and Workstream Coordination Workshop, an intensive program organized from June 8 to 19, 2026. This crucial event was spearheaded by the Polio Eradication Programme (PEP), a key division of the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO).

Bringing together delegates from national Ministries of Health, polio reference laboratories, WHO country offices, the WHO Regional Office for Africa, and WHO Headquarters, the workshop’s primary objective is to fortify the data systems that underpin polio surveillance, facilitate effective outbreak responses, and drive evidence-based decision-making throughout the African continent.

Attendees are meticulously scrutinizing data quality across several critical facets of the polio program. This includes surveillance for Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), environmental monitoring, laboratory surveillance, electronic surveillance systems, and Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs). Furthermore, they are delving into the significant challenges impacting data integrity, aiming to pinpoint persistent barriers and devise actionable solutions to ensure the consistent and timely transmission of dependable data.

This intensive phase incorporates a series of hands-on sessions, leveraging digital tools and innovative solutions developed by the regional team. The goal is to bolster the adoption of data-centric approaches across all operational levels. Discussions also encompass the practical application and ongoing maintenance of various digital platforms. These platforms are crucial for supporting high-performing information systems, thereby guaranteeing swift data collection, analysis, and reporting, which in turn facilitates evidence-based decision-making.

The workshop commenced with an official opening address delivered by Dr. Yao N’da Konan Michel, the WHO Representative in Senegal. During his remarks, Dr. Michel conveyed profound appreciation to the Government and Ministry of Health of Senegal for their hospitality in hosting this pivotal gathering in Dakar. He also commended Senegal’s impressive achievements and robust track record in combating infectious diseases throughout the Region.

Dr. Michel underscored that while the WHO African Region achieved a historic milestone in 2020 by being certified free of indigenous wild poliovirus, the ongoing threat posed by circulating variant polioviruses necessitates unwavering vigilance for complete polio eradication. He emphasized the critical importance of high-quality surveillance, swift outbreak responses, effective vaccination campaigns, and the ability to pinpoint and close immunity gaps wherever they arise. Central to these endeavors, he highlighted, is a resilient digital ecosystem underpinned by robust data governance.

Following the opening ceremony, Mr. Kebba Touray, who leads the Data and Information Management Team for the Polio Eradication Programme, presented the workshop’s objectives and methodology. He articulated that this gathering epitomizes a shared commitment to safeguarding and building upon the program’s extensive legacy in data management, thereby strengthening public health surveillance systems across Africa for the long term. Mr. Touray further noted that this robust system was forged through the dedicated leadership of WHO, years of targeted funding from the Gates Foundation, and invaluable technical support from various partners.

Mr. Touray urged participants to fully utilize the two-week workshop to establish robust mechanisms capable of addressing critical data quality deficiencies across all program workstreams. He cautioned that a failure to advance in this area would complicate the assessment of surveillance sensitivity, hinder the monitoring of SIA quality, impede the analysis of outbreak response performance, and make it difficult to target risk-based interventions effectively. Such an outcome, he concluded, would jeopardize the significant strides made towards polio eradication in the Region.