Weekly IDSR Bulletin

Analytics: National IDSR reporting performance rebounded sharply in Epidemiological Week 43, with completeness increasing from 94% to 97% and timeliness advancing from 93% to 95% on the One Health Surveillance Platform (OHSP).

Insights: This performance improvement underscores robust health facility compliance nationwide and successful routine supervisory follow-up across reporting sites.

Recommendations: Maintain active platform support to solidify performance gains well above the 80% national minimum target.

Analytics: All health zones and Central Hospitals exceeded the 80% national target. Central Hospitals achieved 100% on both metrics. Central East, South East, and South West scored 98% completeness with timeliness between 96%-98%. North achieved 93% completeness and 93% timeliness, while Central West logged 91% completeness and 90% timeliness.

Insights: Performance across all 6 reporting zones remains remarkably uniform and above key surveillance benchmarks.

Recommendations: Focus targeted follow-ups on specific underperforming district sites within North and Central West zones.

Analytics: In Epidemiological Week 43, 98 community signals were reported across 6 districts. Verification confirmed 48 signals (49%) as true public health events, 49 signals (50%) were unverified, and 1 signal (1%) was discarded.

Insights: Clustered illness symptoms and severe watery diarrhoea with dehydration made up the vast majority of community reports (63 of 98 signals).

Recommendations: District Rapid Response Teams (DRRTs) must prioritize unverified signals in high-density districts to ensure zero undetected outbreaks.

Analytics: Formal risk assessments were conducted for 46 of the 48 verified community events. Results show 27 events (59%) classified as High Risk, 10 (22%) as Very High Risk, 4 (8%) as Moderate Risk, and 5 (11%) as Low Risk.

Insights: An overwhelming 81% of assessed events were categorized as High or Very High Risk, pointing to substantial public health threats in reporting communities.

Recommendations: Deploy emergency response teams immediately to all High and Very High risk event locations.

Analytics: In Epidemiological Week 43, 30 new epi-linked cases were reported from Dedza, Balaka, Chikwawa, and Mulanje. Cumulative outbreak totals show Nsanje with 529 cases (84 lab-confirmed), Balaka with 494 cases (74 lab-confirmed), Chikwawa with 387 cases (38 lab-confirmed), and Dedza with 378 cases (13 lab-confirmed).

Insights: While transmission in several health facility catchments has been declared contained after 42 days of zero cases, active clusters persist in Golomoti, Ngabu, and Ndamera.

Recommendations: EPI teams must sustain high-coverage routine immunization catch-up activities and field investigations in active hotspot catchments.

Analytics: Out of 33 reporting sites, 30 (90%) reached the national ≥80% benchmark for completeness and timeliness. Three DHOs failed to meet targets: Likoma DHO (77% completeness, 71% timeliness), Karonga DHO (83% completeness, 70% timeliness), and Mulanje DHO (77% completeness, 77% timeliness).

Insights: Balaka DHO successfully recovered compliance to 100% in Week 43, while Likoma, Karonga, and Mulanje experienced data submission lags.

Recommendations: Zonal epidemiology focal points must directly mentor data entry teams in Likoma, Karonga, and Mulanje to resolve OHSP uploading issues.