Johannesburg: The Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, will officially launch a publicly accessible, near-live tuberculosis (TB) dashboard on Friday. This initiative is part of a collaborative effort between the Department of Health, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), and the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) to reduce TB incidence and mortality in South Africa by the year 2035.

According to South African Government News Agency, the country has a high burden of TB but remains on track to meet End TB goals. “This innovative digital platform will provide TB testing data from across South Africa, giving the public, media and other stakeholders unprecedented access to the country’s comprehensive and verified data for timely decision-making processes.”

The dashboard will play a significant role in tracking the country’s progress towards the End TB campaign’s ambitious goal of testing five million people in 2025/26. The department explained that it will use the lessons learned from the successful implementation of the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) developed to manage the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The End TB campaign dashboard is also part of South Africa’s advancement towards Universal Health Coverage.

“Data-driven decision-making has proven to be helpful to public health leaders in responding faster to emerging threats, allocating resources more effectively, and improving patient outcomes at every level of care,” the department said. The launch will entail live demonstrations of the dashboard’s functionality, which provides a comprehensive and interactive overview of accurate TB data by province, district, age and sex.

The department believes that the dashboard is a major step forward in data transparency and accountability. The launch will take place at the Health Laboratory Service Head Office in Sandringham, Johannesburg, from 10am.