Dar es Salaam, 6-8 March 2018: Effective coordination enhances timely responses to Public Health Events (PHEs) and plays a critical role in reducing morbidity and mortality. Moreover, it reduces duplication and competition, and allows different agencies and organizations to complement each other.

Given the burden of outbreaks and other PHEs in the WHO African Region, the availability of a central virtual platform for coordination of responses to PHEs that supports real time communication and information management is very crucial. The WHO’s Virtual Strategic Health Operations Centre (VSHOC) is a software that serves for this purpose.

The United Republic of Tanzania has been battling an outbreak of Cholera since August 2015 that has to date affected 30,028 people and claimed 493 lives. Ending the outbreak and preventing its spread beyond Tanzania's borders is a high priority for WHO. To that end, WHO and partners support a coordinated multisectoral response through the National Cholera Task Force which plans, coordinates and support subnational authorities.

Late in 2017, the WHO three-level emergency response coordination team recognized the need for building capacity of Country Office staff to be able to share real time information related to Cholera emergency response for action and enhance collaboration between the three-levels of the organization. In this context, a 3-days’ hands on VSHOC training has been organized for country office staff with the support from the Regional Office VSHOC Focal Person, Mr. A Elias Mekuria from WCO Ethiopia.

VSHOC is a web-based application that provides access to Strategic Health Operations Centre (SHOC) data in real time and compliments the EMS (Event Management System). It's an internal system designed to link WHO Emergency Operation Centres (EOCs) and external agencies and staff in the field, enabling users to securely share operational information from anywhere with an internet connection.

“In the context of the Transformation Agenda, focus is put on strengthening the capacity of country offices so that they can play their role as the Operation Centres of the Organization and support the efficient delivery of programmes in a more responsive and interactive manner. This VSHOC training has been organized to ensure no one is left behind in the transformation and to help us appreciate that emergency is everyone’s business”, said the WR, Dr Matthieu Kamwa in his opening remarks.

VSHOC is not only a way to communicate, it's also a way to share operational information in real-time internally and externally, providing: Situational Awareness and a Common Operating Picture. The VSHOC will enable the country office to create a permanent record of key operational information during incident response and work as collaborative work space for data storage and data display.