By Keith Cloete, Head, Western Cape Department of Health.

This "My Take" was written for New era of global public health partnerships, Trend #7 in the Government Trends 2022 report.

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Over the last two decades, the Western Cape Department of Health has taken significant measures to reform the Public Health System. One of them includes establishing the Provincial Health Data Center (PHDC), a partnership with the University of Cape Town, with some additional funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The PHDC integrates person-level clinical data from health institutions across the province, and from multiple sources of individual patient data. It tracks all the data for an individual through a unique identifier and enables a single view for each patient.

During COVID-19, the PHDC enhanced our surveillance strategies. It allowed us to gather real-time data and information on the number of laboratory tests and those who tested positive. We could use the system to check whether an infected individual had a history of co-morbidities, including diabetes, tuberculosis, or HIV. Within weeks, we were able to set up a public dashboard that provided daily information on the number of infected individuals, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Moreover, the person-level data allowed us to build population-level views of active cases, hospitalizations and deaths. For instance, local healthcare teams used the platform to track real-time, consolidated views of the active cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their respective geographic areas. They conducted contract tracing and developed appropriate data-led containment strategies to flatten the COVID-19 curve, through a Whole of Society Approach, in each geographic area. The teams also developed appropriate containment strategies for people with higher risks for severe disease, through data-led targeted interventions (e.g. through tele-medicine strategies aimed at Diabetics). Later, the system was used to track the impact of COVID-19 immunizations on the prevalence of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Surveillance has been a central piece of our COVID-19 strategy. It's now being used to address other health problems, including Tuberculosis, Violence and Mental Health.

(Image Credit: Unsplash)

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