Swedish partner: Region Västerbotten

In many parts of the world infectious diseases are severely under-reported, sometimes because of lack of diagnostic capacity and statistics, but sometimes as a conscious decision to protect economic and political interests. This approach is not consistent with good democracy and threaten especially those people already struggling to defend themselves because of poverty or lack of education. Lack of understanding of when, where, how and who suffer from these conditions affect the individual and the society’s ability to prevent spread of infections. Mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever is no exception. 

This is one of three sub-projects within the framework of a well-established collaboration between Västerbotten County Council and Yogyakarta City Government addressing the development of a more sustainable, transparent and democratic health system, using dengue fever as a model. 

This project (2) aims to improve the citizens’ health literacy; the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health, and a community-based structure that empower the people to become co-creator of their own health. This work includes establishing clear roles and mandates in the community and to create trust in structures on community as well as governmental level.

Infectious diseases are severely under-reported global, sometimes because of lack of capacity to diagnose and report disease cases, but also as a conscious decision to protect economic and political interests. This approach is not consistent with a good democracy and threatens especially those who are already vulnerable, poor or uneducated. Lack of understanding of when, where, how and who suffer from these conditions affect the individual as well as society’s ability to prevent the spread of infection. Mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever are no exception.

This is one of three projects within the framework of a well-established collaboration between Västerbotten County Council and the Yogyakarta City Government, who has jointly addressed the development of a more sustainable, transparent and democratic health system with dengue fever as a model. 

This project (Project 1) aims to create a more transparent health authority equipped with political will as well as tools that enables sharing of disease-related information, such as disease statistics, forecasts and decisions about preventive activities, with the citizen, but also two-way communication channels that enables the individual citizen to influence these decisions.

To manage the growing burden of dengue, many actors have to interact and the awareness among citizens has to increase. The purpose of this project is to strengthen the organizational infrastructure of Yogyakarta city to address this issue.

The goal is to introduce a new decision support system that makes it possible to deliver dengue forecasts, a system that requires collaboration between health care, meteorological offices, health offices, schools and civic programs.

The project will support the establishment of clear roles, responsibilities, coordination of actions and communication channels based on existing efforts, to create a sustainable collaboration around these issues.