Conference Abstract | Volume 9 (ConfPro8): Abstract 51 | Published: 08 Oct 2026
Kojo Boateng1,2,&, George Akowuah2, Courage Anku1, Martha Arkaa Kotey2, Magdalene Odikro2, Samuel Dapaa2, Samuel Sackey2
1Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipal Health Directorate, EJURA, Ghana, 2Ghana Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme, University of Ghana School of Public Health, ACCRA, Ghana
&Corresponding author: Kojo Boateng, Municipal Health Directorate, Ejura, Ghana, Email: boat143@gmail.com
Received: 11 Mar 2026, Accepted: 30 Aug 2026, Published: 08 Oct 2026
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Public health surveillance, Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR), Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipal, fishbone (ishikawa) analysis, human resource shortage
©Kojo Boateng et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Kojo Boateng et al., Inadequate Public Health Surveillance Activities: A Problem Analysis in Ejura-Sekyedu-mase Municipal, Ashanti Region, Ghana, 2026. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2026;9(ConfPro8):51. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO8-0051
Public health surveillance systems, such as the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy, are critical for timely outbreak detection and response. In the Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipal, recurring outbreaks of immediately notifiable diseases (e.g., measles) exposed systemic surveillance gaps, including reporting delays, incomplete data submission, and weak data validation. This study systematically analysed the underlying root causes of these gaps to inform targeted, evidence-based interventions.
A descriptive, cross-sectional study using a qualitative approach was conducted across health facilities and the municipal health management team. Qualitative data were gathered via a focus group discussion and structured brainstorming sessions with 19 participants from purposively selected health workers by health facility. Root causes were systematically categorised using Fishbone (Ishikawa) analysis and prioritised based on the municipal health directorate’s level of control.
A total of 19 participants were involved in the focus group discussion. Six themes were generated. The critical cause identified was inadequate surveillance focal persons across most municipal health facilities, with an additional 26 causes identified. Consequently, surveillance functions have become an additional administrative burden for already strained clinical personnel, directly undermining reporting timelines across the system, poor data documentation, and substandard IDSR compliance. While environmental factors (poor road and telecom networks) and financial constraints (delayed funding) fall largely outside local control, multiple procedural gaps, such as weak supervision, a lack of data validation, and absent feedback loops, were identified as areas under total local management.
Surveillance inefficiencies in the municipality are fundamentally anchored in human resource shortages and systemic management oversights. Mitigating these vulnerabilities requires moving disease surveillance from an ad-hoc, secondary task to a properly institutionalised core operational function.
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