The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria (HFN) and PharmAccess Foundation to improve disease surveillance reporting by private healthcare facilities.

According to a statement on Tuesday, the agreement was signed in Abuja to establish a pilot for automated reporting into the country’s national disease surveillance system.

The pilot will test digital systems for transferring Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response data into NCDC’s Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System.

It aims to improve the quality, completeness and timeliness of disease reports while reducing the reporting burden on participating private facilities.

The Director-General of NCDC, Dr Jide Idris; Country Director of PharmAccess, Njide Ndili; and First Vice President of HFN, Dr Benson Ayodele Cole, signed the agreement.

Speaking at the signing, Idris said private healthcare providers held data needed to strengthen disease surveillance and health security.

“Disease surveillance and health security cannot be effectively achieved without the private sector. A significant proportion of the data needed to understand what is happening across our health system sits within private facilities. We therefore need to strengthen the way we engage the private sector and create systems that allow this data to contribute more effectively to national surveillance.”

He said the collaboration would strengthen links between private healthcare delivery and national surveillance.

The statement said the agreement followed a survey conducted by HFN and PharmAccess to identify challenges private providers faced in meeting disease reporting requirements.

Cole, who represented HFN, said the partnership would build on the survey’s findings.

“This journey started with the IDSR survey that HFN undertook with PharmAccess, which gave us an opportunity to listen to private-sector providers and understand some of the challenges they face with surveillance reporting. Today’s signing is an important progression from that work. We are moving from understanding the problem to working together with NCDC and PharmAccess to develop practical solutions that fit into the way providers actually work.”

Under the agreement, HFN will engage private healthcare providers and technology partners, work with NCDC to select participating facilities and jointly lead the pilot’s design and implementation.

PharmAccess will provide technical support on data exchange between systems, digital standards and system design, alongside knowledge transfer and documentation.

Ndili said the foundation would draw on its experience with disease surveillance in Kenya while developing an approach suited to Nigeria’s health system.

The statement added that data-sharing arrangements would comply with applicable data protection laws and health information governance requirements, with safeguards for security, confidentiality and appropriate use.

It said the pilot would support improvements to surveillance reporting without changing providers’ existing statutory reporting obligations.