How Novel-t started
From VTS to GTS (2/10)
When the map satisfies nobody
Northern Nigeria had microplans for polio campaigns. On paper, teams knew where to go. The problem was what happened after. Which settlements were actually reached? Which were missed again? Traditional methods couldn’t answer that reliably. And every missed settlement meant children who didn’t get vaccinated.
In 2012, the Vaccination Tracking System changed the feedback loop. Field teams carried GPS-enabled phones. Their movements were uploaded daily. For the first time, supervisors could see – while a campaign round was still running – which settlements had been visited and which hadn’t. Mop-up actions started the next day, not after the round was over.
Paired with satellite-based settlement mapping that made invisible communities visible on the map, VTS exposed chronically missed areas that had slipped through for years.
The impact was real: VTS became a cornerstone of Nigeria’s polio eradication effort, contributing to the WHO African Region being certified free of wild poliovirus in August 2020.
#RTS did a piece on this back in the days – and yes, you get to see what the Novel-T founding team looked like over a decade ago. Worth the click for that alone: https://lnkd.in/dZ-GWJra
→ Missed Post 1? It starts with a phone call in Geneva: https://lnkd.in/dvvw6qwH
→ Post 3 coming soon: Scale tracking with GTS – follow Novel-T to stay with the series.
#GlobalHealth #PublicHealth #GIS #Immunization #FieldOperations #Polio #GTS
