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Author Notes:

Paula Mc Kenna, Janssen Global Public Health, Disease Management Programs, Janssen Pharmaceutica Nv, Turnhoutseweg 30, Beerse B-2340, Belgium. Email: pmckenna@its.jnj.com

Romain Rutten, Serge Masyn, Annik Willems, Anne De Paepe, Paula Mc Kenna contributed to the conception, design & implementation of the campaign. Jean Baptiste Mazarati, Felix Sayinzoga, Etienne Karita, Jean Nepo Nduwamungu, Julien Nyombayire, Rosine Ingabire, Amelia Mazzei, Monica Amponsah and Seth Gogo Egoeh supported implementation of the campaign and were responsible for acquisition of the data. Romain Rutten, Serge Masyn, Annik Willems, Anne De Paepe, Paula Mc Kenna, Monica Amponsah, Seth Gogo Egoeh and Nnamdi Ezeanochie contributed to the analysis and interpretation of data. All authors contributed to drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

We thank the participants, community health-care workers and support staff for their participation and efforts during the campaign and also the Ministry of Health of Rwanda. We are also very grateful to the Rinda Ubuzima organization for their work around community engagement for this campaign. We are thankful to Johnson and Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions team for their behavioral science work around mobile messaging.

Romain Rutten, Serge Masyn, Annik Willems, Anne De Paepe, Paula Mc Kenna and Nnamdi Ezeanochie are Janssen employees and may be stock owners of Johnson and Johnson. Jean Baptiste Mazarati, Felix Sayingoza, Etienne Karita, Jean Nepo Nduwamungu, Rosine Ingabire, Amelia Mazzei, Monica Amponsah and Seth Gogo Egoeh have no conflicts of interest to declare.

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

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Research Funding:

This campaign was supported by the Government of Rwanda, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Wellcome [Grant number 220214/Z/20/Z] and Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health. Writing support was provided by Patrick Hoggard of Zoetic Science, an Ashfield company, part of UDG Healthcare plc, and was funded by Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health. EBODAC support offered to this vaccine campaign has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement EBODAC (grant nr. 115847). This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.

Keywords:

  • Large-scale vaccination program
  • implementation campaign
  • patient identification
  • iris scanning
  • biometrics
  • mobile phone communication
  • vaccination monitoring
  • Rwanda

Leapfrogging with technology: introduction of a monitoring platform to support a large-scale Ebola vaccination program in Rwanda

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Journal Title:

Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics

Volume:

Volume 17, Number 9

Publisher:

, Pages 3192-3202

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Continued outbreaks of Ebola virus disease, including recent outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), highlight the need for effective vaccine programs to combat future outbreaks. Given the population flow between DRC and Rwanda, the Rwanda Ministry of Health initiated a preventive vaccination campaign supported by a vaccination monitoring platform (VMP). The campaign aimed to vaccinate approximately 200,000 people from Rwanda’s Rubavu and Rusizi districts with the two-dose vaccine regimen Ad26.ZEBOV, MVA-BN-Filo. The VMP encompassed: biometric identification (iris scanning), mobile messaging, and an interactive reporting dashboard. The VMP collected data used to register and identify participants at subsequent visits. Mobile message reminders supported compliance. To 13 November 2020, the campaign was half complete with Ad26.ZEBOV administered to 116,974 participants and MVA-BN-Filo to 76,464. MVA-BN-Filo should be given to participants approximately 8 weeks after the Ad26.ZEBOV with a compliance window of −14 and +28 days. Of the 83,850 participants who were eligible per this dosing window for the subsequent MVA-BN-Filo vaccine, 91.2% (76,453/83,850) received it and 82.9% (69,505/83,850) received it within the compliance window defined for this campaign. Utilization of the VMP was instrumental to the success of the campaign, using biometric technology, dashboard reporting of near real-time data analysis and mobile phone communication technology to support vaccine administration and monitoring. A comprehensive VMP is feasible in large-scale health-care campaigns, beneficial for public health surveillance, and can allow effective response to an infectious disease outbreak.

Copyright information:

© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/rdf).
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