Mozambique - Plan for Strengthening Integrated Disease Surveillance Systems

Sergio Chicumbe and colleagues at the Instituto Nacional de Saúde in Mozambique together with the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders will create a plan for strengthening the national surveillance and response systems established during the COVID-19 pandemic and expanding them to multiple diseases. During the pandemic, they built systems that spanned the public and private sectors to ensure rapid testing and data collection country-wide, as well as data reporting in real-time. Their proposal will involve integrating this system with existing surveillance systems such as the countrywide mortality surveillance for action, which registers births and deaths. The proposal will also link laboratory data with individual data collected by public health officials, while ensuring confidentiality, to produce more valuable datasets for public health and emergency response. They will also provide training to strengthen analytical capabilities and establish a data-to-action framework to support decision-making.