Category: Public Sector and Service Innovation
Client: Municipal Council - Dehiwala, Mount Lavinia
A large number of dengue-related deaths have been recorded in the Western Province in recent years. In 2019, the Western province alone reported over 45,000 cases of dengue with urban suburbs being the worst hit.
The Dehiwala – Mount Lavinia Municipal Council requested Citra’s support in developing a citizen-centric solution for dengue prevention and control.
Following a request received from the Dehiwala – Mount Lavinia Municipal Council, Citra entered into a partnership with the Municipality to develop a citizen-centered solution for dengue prevention and control.
As a first step, we conducted several focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders, including the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) and Public Health Inspectors (PHI), as part of the systems mapping phase of our project process. These discussions provided greater insights into the challenges within the current system and helped identify the needs of responding officials – which would in turn inform the solution we would develop.
Following these initial discussions, Citra conducted a survey of 300 residents in the Ratmalana area, with the help of students from the University of Moratuwa, to better understand the attitudes and challenges faced by the community around dengue prevention.
The survey found that:
89.3% of respondents felt a need for a reporting mechanism
81.7% respondents were willing to engage with a platform
82% felt a need for increased accountability
Drawing on the insights gathered from both the Focus Group Discussions and the survey, the Citra team carried out a series of internal prototyping sessions to design a solution that would address the key challenges and issues identified by the stakeholders.
The final solution was an engagement platform, which aims to improve the municipal council’s efficiency in identifying, managing, and monitoring dengue. The platform ‘MozZapp’ allows communities to send the exact location and picture of potential or actual dengue mosquito breeding sites, to relevant officials for necessary action. The resident lodging a complaint will be provided with continuous updates on the site they reported, until it is cleared by the health officer. The resident is then able to rate the services provided by the Public Health officer.
Additionally, the system also provides a user-friendly, interactive web interface to process and analyze data which will help decision makers predict and/or visualize potential risk-prone areas.
Having finalized the prototype platform, the team tested the application with over 300 households (including original survey respondents) within the Ratmalana MOH area to ensure that any usability issues could be addressed prior to launching the platform to the public. The team was supported by volunteers, MOH officers and PHIs. The feedback received was incorporated to improve Mozzapp’s functionality and to ensure that the platform was user friendly.
The MozZapp platform, now a user tested, fit-for-purpose solution, was handed over to the Ratmalana MOH office in November 2019 for implementation in partnership with the Dehiwala- Mount Lavinia Municipal Council. We are currently exploring options to scale this solution for use in other Municipalities island-wide.
