Information flow in ProMED during Ebola 2014

Abstract

The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED-mail) has been using informal sources of data to detect health threat for near two decades, and it relies on human experts to produce reliable reports. The Internet technology allows moderators, ProMED-mail staff, and subscribers to form a human-moderated surveillance system and to work 'virtually' in infectious disease detection. The earliest report for the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa in 2014 demonstrated the power of network. The objective of this study is to identify how ProMED-mail functioned during the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and to explore the challenges of using informal data in the evaluation of an emerging disease outbreak. Descriptive analysis is used to study the information flow within ProMED-mail during initial Ebola outbreak 2014. The result shown that ProMED-mail provided timely reporting with about 80% of the reports being disseminated within 1 day. When studying the sources of report from only within Africa, it was found that 85% came from informal sources and only 15% came from official channels. The local news and reports from observers play a vital role in bringing out local issues in Africa. The results in the present study indicate that the use of informal data in infectious disease detection is crucial in developing countries. It supports the allocation of resources to train and recruit health professionals with appropriate expertise in verifying outbreak reports.