This community innovation has been accepted at the 2026 DHIS2 Annual Conference and will be in abstract track/lightning talk.
Senegal–Gambia Cross‑border Malaria Surveillance
Eliminating malaria in border areas requires interoperable surveillance systems capable of ensuring harmonized, secure, and real‑time data exchange between neighboring countries. Senegal and The Gambia have historically faced difficulties in aligning indicators, integrating campaign data, and coordinating responses. Between 2022 and 2025, the National Malaria Control Programs (NMCP/PNLP), with technical support from PATH/MACEPA, co‑developed a cross‑border platform based on DHIS2 (senegambiamalaria.org) to address these challenges.
The technical architecture relies on a secure and scalable cloud infrastructure: a pipeline for aggregated data integration developed with R via the DHIS2 Web API and Metadata Sync to ensure interoperability with national DHIS2 instances for elimination, a PostgreSQL database hosted on a high‑capacity Linux server via Linode Cloud, a reverse proxy server (NGINX) ensuring encrypted communication (SSL/HTTP2), and the domain managed via Linode. This configuration enables the smooth integration of data from national DHIS2 instances of both countries into a unified repository, as well as from the unified repository back to national DHIS2 instances for cross‑border case‑based surveillance.
The platform integrates a common organizational hierarchy of six levels covering 608 villages and 129 health posts, a harmonized indicator matrix, shared geospatial layers, and synchronized imports. During the 2025 ITN campaign, teams integrated household, coupon, and denominator data, generating joint dashboards that display coverage, gaps, and sex‑disaggregated trends.
Governance is based on bilateral technical committees, SOPs, bilingual terms of use, case‑based surveillance forms, and a regular consultation calendar. Access is secured via OAuth2 and harmonized role management.
This experience demonstrates the potential of DHIS2 as an evolving foundation for regional disease surveillance, with key lessons in architecture, governance, and interoperability for West Africa.
Primary Author: Demba KANDE
Keywords:
DHIS2 Interoperability, Data Integration and Exchange, Cross‑Border Health System Strengthening, Governance and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Malaria Surveillance, Data Pipeline, Event and Aggregate Data Harmonization, Digital Health Architecture
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