Optimizing LLIN Distribution: A Digital Integration Approach for Improved Coverage

Although public health campaigns play a critical role in delivering life-saving interventions, they often face significant challenges that hinder their ability to achieve population coverage goals and ensure efficient resource utilization. These challenges, which have also been observed in the Benin context, can be grouped into four key problem areas:

1. Inefficiency
   • Logistical complexities: Moving large volumes of commodities efficiently across diverse and often hard-to-reach areas remains a significant operational challenge.
   • Human resource management: Hiring, training, and supervising large teams of remote workers can strain both capacity and resources.
   • Data limitations: Outdated population denominators and inaccurate measurement of intervention delivery result in incomplete or inaccurate coverage assessments.
2. Fragmentation
   • Disjointed campaigns: Campaigns often operate in silos with separate funding sources, planning processes, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems for each disease program, reducing opportunities for synergy and efficiency.
   • Siloed data management: Campaign data is frequently stored in isolated systems, limiting interoperability, visibility, and timely use of information for decision-making.
3. Limited Integration with Routine Health Systems
   • Lack of alignment: Campaigns often fail to leverage established supply chain, workforce, and service delivery systems used in routine healthcare, resulting in duplication and inefficiencies.
   • Resource diversion: Campaign activities can inadvertently divert resources (e.g., human resources, funding) away from routine health services, weakening overall system performance.
4. Limited Local Ownership and Coordination
   • Weak Ministry of Health (MOH) ownership: Campaigns are often donor- or partner-driven, limiting the MOH’s involvement, leadership, and long-term stewardship.
   • Limited local stakeholder engagement: Local stakeholders, including health system actors and community leaders, are not always fully involved in planning, execution, and oversight, reducing the potential for sustainability.

Public health campaigns have long been essential for delivering large-scale healthcare interventions with high coverage for diseases such as malaria, malnutrition, measles, meningitis, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), polio, tetanus, typhoid, yellow fever, and more recently, COVID-19.

By allocating targeted resources to achieve clear objectives within defined timeframes, campaigns can effectively complement routine health services provided through integrated health systems. However, in practice, many campaigns face challenges, including suboptimal population coverage, inefficient resource utilization, limited integration with routine health services, and insufficient country ownership and leadership.

Technology has the potential to address these challenges by enhancing local ownership and oversight, enabling well-planned, efficiently executed campaigns that achieve higher coverage. Digital tools facilitate improved logistics management and provide real-time visibility into intervention delivery, ensuring resources are effectively directed to areas of greatest need.

In Benin, the Ministry of Health has prioritized digital health with a long-term vision to leverage information and communication technologies (ICTs) across all levels of the healthcare system to:

1. Ensure the availability of reliable, up-to-date health and medical information.
2. Enhance the quality and accessibility of healthcare services.
3. Streamline the management of healthcare facilities.

Aligned with Benin’s Community Health Policy and the government’s choice of a digital platform, AlafiaCom, on which to run all public health campaigns going forward in the country. integrating mass health campaigns into this tool is a key priority. This alignment promotes integration, efficiency, and transparent oversight, ensuring more effective implementation of public health campaigns.

The Integrated Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLINs) Distribution Campaign Digitization Project aims to integrate critical campaign components—including planning, supply chain management, training, intervention delivery, payments, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E)—into the national Community Health digital tool (AlafiaCom). Our project seeks to harmonize campaign data with routine, government-owned systems wherever possible.

The project involves developing a dedicated LLINs mass distribution module on AlafiaCom, complementing other campaign modules already in use on the platform. The module will streamline and cover the campaign’s main workflows:

1. Household Data Collection (Enumeration)
2. Data Analysis
3. Nets Distribution
4. Data Reporting
5. Supervision and Oversight (via Dashboards)

By uniting campaign activities under AlafiaCom, this initiative will improve transparency, efficiency, and accountability, ultimately enhancing the impact of LLIN distribution and contributing to the Ministry’s broader digital health vision.

To seamlessly manage all necessary components of a campaign, the proposed solution adds:

• Integration into Existing National Platforms
  Unlike standalone, fragmented tools that are often developed for single campaigns or programs, the proposed solution integrates directly into AlafiaCom, Benin’s national Community Health digital platform. This ensures:
  • A unified data system where campaign data is harmonized with routine health service data.
  • Reduced duplication of tools and resources, promoting cost efficiency and sustainability.
• Holistic Campaign Management
  The solution goes beyond basic data collection by addressing all key components of mass distribution campaigns, including:
  • Planning and supply chain management
  • Worker training and supervision
  • Intervention delivery tracking
  • Monitoring and evaluation (M&E)
    This end-to-end digitization improves coordination, real-time visibility, and operational efficiency, unlike piecemeal solutions that focus on isolated components.
• Enhanced Local Ownership and Capacity
  By embedding the LLIN distribution module into a government-owned system (AlafiaCom), the solution:
  • Strengthens Ministry of Health (MOH) leadership and capacity to oversee and manage campaigns.
  • Fosters long-term sustainability by reducing dependency on external tools or partners.
  • Enables local stakeholders, including health workers, to use a familiar platform, improving uptake and ownership.
• Improved Data Quality and Visibility
  • Real-time data collection, analysis, and reporting ensure timely decision-making for better resource allocation and intervention delivery.
  • Integrated data eliminates silos, enabling a comprehensive view of health interventions and population coverage.
  • This improves the accuracy of reporting and ensures targeted actions to close gaps in coverage.
• Cost-Effective Resource Utilization
  By leveraging an existing digital tool, the proposed solution avoids the costly development of new systems. Additionally:
  • Streamlined logistics and data-driven planning optimize resource allocation.
  • The solution reduces the need for redundant activities (e.g., workshops, manual enumeration), ensuring better value for money.
• Scalability and Adaptability
  The solution builds on an already scalable platform (AlafiaCom), allowing:
  • Easy integration of additional campaign modules for other health interventions (e.g., immunization, NTDs, malnutrition).
  • Flexibility to adapt to evolving programmatic needs and priorities.