Colombo | Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka joined the global community of the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) initiative following a three-day workshop that was organized in the country from 20 to 22 November 2023. The systems training workshop was conducted with the participation of 35 trainees from One Health partner institutions including those representing human and animal health sectors, and disaster management, chemical, biological and radio-nuclear focal points. The event was co-organized by the Ministry of Health with WHO country office and WHO South-East Asia Regional Office to support event-based surveillance and the use of the EIOS system in strengthening this effort.
The Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources initiative is a unique collaboration between public health stakeholders around the globe to harness the benefits from publicly available information to generate public health signals. The EIOS system is designed to augment and accelerate global public health intelligence activities, built on a long-standing collaboration between WHO and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
EIOS is built on three pillars: a growing global community of practice – which Sri Lanka joined last week, a range of multi-disciplinary collaborators and an ever evolving fit-for-purpose system. The global community, including Member States, international and regional organizations, expert networks, research institutes and other collaborators - is at the heart of the initiative, saving lives through early detection of threats and implementing a rapid intervention as an ultimate goal.
Sri Lanka’s indicator-based surveillance system is effective and well rooted, yet the event-based surveillance system is evolving and can benefit from initiatives such as the EIOS. The country is now moving forward in to strengthening event-based surveillance system for public health intelligence. The EIOS initiative will enable Sri Lanka to effectively utilize publicly available information for early detection, verification, assessment and communication of public health threats.
The agenda of the workshop included live training sessions, case studies, polls, and self-study activities. The latter was supported through practical exercises and user guides, allowing trainees to practice and reinforce concepts introduced during the sessions. On the second day of the workshop, the participants were able to set up boards and apply different filters to serve monitoring their specific events including zoonotic, vaccine-preventable, communicable, and vector-borne diseases, and for points of entry surveillance.
On the last day participants engaged in an ‘EIOS Championship’ game to set up event-based surveillance on the EIOS platform for a group of threats identified according to their areas of work. Participants chose, human influenza, point of entry surveillance, respiratory pathogen of unknown origin, malaria and chemical -radio nuclear events for development of monitoring boards. Each group later presented their monitoring boards and the rationale behind the boards and how each team will use EIOS in their daily surveillance functioning.
Participants agreed on the resourcefulness and sensitivity of the tool and expressed how they could effectively utilize the tool for better event monitoring. As follow-up to the training Sri Lanka will now expand the list of key words to include all hazards and expand the list of local sources to be monitored. The system once fully adopted will contribute towards enhancing public health capabilities, strengthening health risk monitoring, early warning and signal generation for action.
