Government
The participation of “disease detectives” powers digital disease surveillance systems for local governments by better equipping them with relevant and timely data. Local health authorities can monitor the status of sick animals in real-time from their offices as farmers take pictures and upload them to the PODD system.
Without government buy-in, data is just unactionable information. Indeed, national governments benefit as PODD adds surveillance capacities previously unavailable to them. Ministries of agriculture and public health have access to granular local data, which helps to improve understanding of disease trends, burden of disease, and inform allocation of (sometimes scarce) national resources for disease control.
- Local governments also report feeling empowered to solve problems themselves, which makes them more engaged in finding solutions.
- In the first 3 months after launching PODD, more abnormal health events were reported than the entire previous year – which means that most animal illnesses and deaths were never reported in previous years.