The key take home from the workshop were: the Regional Epidemiologist – Dr. P. Hemachandra – stressing the need for Syndromic surveillance; especially, the ability to monitor escalating fever like disease and geographic clusters of increase in common symptoms. Dr. Lakshman Edirisinghe (Deputy Director Planning) emphasized the need for comprehensive patient clinical data for becoming a data driven organization that can optimize the resources opposed to speculative expert opinion. The group also realized that the present day activated passive surveillance system does not catch the epidemic at the root but reacts to merged incidences. The Public Health Inspectors were keen in adopting the Alerting element to reduce the time spent on commuting between their jurisdiction and the Medical Officer of Health departments to receive and deliver papers that communicate their investigations. These were all that the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) addressed in its two and a half year action research. The initial results are promising but requires more work before nationalizing and scaling. The Wayamba Provincial Director of Health Services concluded the sessions stating that the Kurunegala district will scale the RTBP in to all hospitals with the help of the Ministry of Health and Dialog Telekom’s Corporate Social Responsibility program. The RTBP Principal Investigator, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne (General Secretary Sarvodaya), was delighted to see the community and government working hand-in-hand towards making Sri Lanka a healthier society. He stressed that our focus should be on community development and Sarvodaya will continue to support these initiatives.
Workshop: Digital Tools for Strengthening Public Discourse
Today, LIRNEasia hosted a workshop to launch digital tools created by Watchdog Sri Lanka, funded by GIZ’s Strengthening Social Cohesion and Peace in Sri Lanka (SCOPE) programme. Researchers, practitioners, activists and journalists attended to learn about these tools, and how they can potentially help them in their own lines of work.
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