Since the Republic of Congo first confirmed a case of circulating variant poliovirus type 1 in March 2023 - the first such detection in more than two decades -, the country has been pioneering the deployment of Geospatial Tracking Systems (GTS) to help curb further transmission. Geospatial Tracking Systems have a critical role to play in the monitoring of vaccination teams during polio outbreak response campaigns. With support from World Health Organization (WHO) and the rest of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the mobile application was most recently utilized in Brazzaville during a national vaccination campaign from June 9 to 11, 2023, led by Congo’s Ministry of Health. Cellphones are crucial, and WHO made 500 smartphones available to vaccinators during the campaign. These were handed out every morning by the WHO AFRO Geographic Information Systems Centre team, before vaccinations began. The tracker acts like any other mobile application, counting steps and using the coordinates collected to locate them on the map. At the end of every day, this information is synthesized to determine which houses still need to be visited by vaccinators, providing clear guidance to teams to help ensure no children are overlooked. In conjunction with the Open Data Kit (ODK), it also has the capacity to collect field data, including settlement names, types of households, reasons for refusal to vaccinate, and more. After the campaign, the data is used to update ward-level micro plans to improve future vaccination rounds. Congo first used this innovation in 2021. The application has since been updated, and more vaccinators are receiving the necessary training to use it optimally.
