Un agent de MSF mène une session de sensibilisation auprès des patients dans la salle d'attente de la clinique MSF Sea House, sur l'île de Lesvos, en Grèce, pendant les heures d'ouverture des soins de santé primaires. Avril, 2024© Evgenia Chorou/MSF

Epidemiological support

Two specialist advisors from the LuxOR team provide epidemiological support to our projects in Central Africa, the Horn of Africa, Kenya and Haiti. They provide an overview of health trends in MSF's areas of operation in MSF's areas of intervention, help anticipate future health challenges through a proactive process of monitoring and analysing epidemiological data and provide strategic insights at different stages of the project at headquarters and in the field.

Epidemiology within MSF entails systematic monitoring, surveillance, and operational research of diseases and health-related events in the populations we serve, and helps inform our operations. This involves active disease surveillance including community-based surveillance, outbreak investigations, risk factor identification, population health assessments, operational research and surveys leading to evidence-based decision-making to guide medical interventions in crisis and resource-limited settings. This systematic study of disease distribution aids in strategic resource allocation, ensuring that personnel and supplies are directed where they are most needed. Epidemiological evidence also plays a pivotal role in preventive measures, guiding vaccination campaigns and health education initiatives, and also nutrition and mortality surveys. In essence, epidemiology within MSF not only monitors and evaluates the impact of interventions but also enables a community-centered approach, ensuring that medical operations are both responsive to local needs and aligned with the organization's commitment to effective and culturally sensitive healthcare in humanitarian settings.

MSF's weekly medical data in Aweil State Hospital, South Sudan.

MSF's weekly medical data at Aweil State Hospital, South Sudan

In 2023, LuxOR supported the response to multiple epidemics of measles, cholera and malaria in at least four countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Haiti) by providing technical training for epidemiologists and field data managers, ensuring that the right tools were data collection, storage and analysis tools are in place, and providing strategic advice to medical teams.

After the implementation in 2021 of a nutrition and food security monitoring system in South Sudan, to better understand the needs of the population at project and national levels national level, LuxOR worked in 2023 to adapt the tool for use by MSF on a use by MSF on a global scale.