Leveraging interactive voice response technology to mitigate COVID-19 risk in refugee settlements in Uganda: Lessons learned implementing "Dial-COVID" a toll-free mobile phone symptom surveillance and information dissemination tool.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Persons living in refugee settlements in sub-Saharan Africa may be at increased risk for COVID-19 and experience barriers to accessing COVID-19 information. We aimed to evaluate the implementation of "Dial-COVID" a multi-lingual, toll free, telephone platform that uses interactive voice response (IVR) to track COVID-19 symptoms/exposure and disseminate COVID-19 health information in refugee settlements in Uganda. We hypothesized that IVR could provide an alternative way to screen for COVID-19 and communicate public health information to humanitarian populations when physical access and testing capacity were limited.

Methods

The Dial-COVID IVR platform was created in ten languages and advertised by community health workers in refugee settlements for participants to

SUBMITTER: Klabbers RE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9870132 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature