The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa hosted its first virtual ‘hackathon’ bringing together 100 leading innovators from across sub-Saharan Africa in a bid to pioneer creative local solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic and address critical gaps in the regional response
Dr Moredreck Chibi, the WHO regional innovation advisor who facilitated the event, said, As COVID-19 spreads rapidly across Africa, raising concerns about the strain on already fragile health systems, it has become clear that “solutions in the response require action beyond the health sector.
“Innovation can play a critical role in that regard. It should be part of our DNA going forward.”
Hackathon participants were split into eight focus groups, each of which was tasked with developing an innovative and scalable concept aligned with one of the eight pillars of WHO’s current COVID-19 response strategy: coordination; surveillance; risk communication and community cngagement; points of entry; laboratory; infection prevention and control; case management and continuity of essential health services; and operational and logistics support.
Over the course of the three-day event, groups worked on their respective projects via Zoom and WhatsApp, where they also received regular guidance and mentorship from WHO’s innovation team at WHO Africa regional headquarters in Brazzaville.
On the final afternoon of the event, each group pitched their project to a team of WHO experts. Proposals ranged from mobile-driven self-diagnosis, screening and mapping tools to alternative low-cost methods for producing personal protective equipment (PPE). The three highest ranking groups will now receive seed funding and further WHO support to help develop and implement their solutions.
“A lot of us have independently been working on solutions for COVID-19 on a small scale, but the hackathon gave us the opportunity and the platform to be able to expand on our ideas collectively across our diverse backgrounds,” said Laud Basing, a Ghanaian entrepreneur with a background in microbiology and biomedical engineering whose group came out top of the overall rankings.
Their proposed solution uses a mobile platform that incorporates screening at the community level, mass testing and validation as well as the mapping of risk levels in different areas in real time for stakeholders including community health workers to then tailor their responses accordingly.
Online training for COVID-19 responders
WHO Regional Office for Africa has also launched the first online training for emergency responders to bolster efforts in tackling the virus. The two-hour session via video link drew 500 participants and focused on the clinical symptoms of the virus, how to triage COVID-19 cases, treat complications, manage severely ill patients, laboratory testing strategy as well as quarantine strategies.
“We used to provide such training workshops face to face in the countries but with the increasing travel restriction, we think that this will be the way forward to support the countries in the region,” said Ambrose Talisuna, WHO’s emergency preparedness programme manager.
“We designed the training to be as interactive and as short as possible with just 10 minutes for the five presenters sitting in Brazzaville, Geneva, Nairobi, and Cape town, and 50 minutes to respond to the countries questions and to have a discussion about the realities in the field,” Dr Talisuna said.
