Guide
A route through the platform, screen by screen
Scope
The platform reads health reporting from across East Africa and the Horn continuously, in the languages it is published in. It produces three things: a current reading on each tracked outbreak, a watch list of situations that are not yet tracked outbreaks, and case and death estimates for the dates between official situation reports.
It adds speed between official reports, breadth across countries and languages, and measures beyond the case count, including pressure on the response and movement across borders.
Using this guide
The four sections below follow a single route through the platform, from the entry screen to an individual outlet. Each names what a screen displays and what can be done on it, and ends with where that screen leads next. Every screen can also be reached directly from the navigation.
01Access
Open sign inAccess is granted at organisation level. Everyone at the organisation uses the same access key and their own work email address.
Signing in
Enter your work email address and the access key your organisation was given. A link arrives by email and signs you in. There is no password to set or to lose.
Controls. Use the link within the hour. Requesting another one is free and invalidates the first.
Seats
Each person who signs in with the key takes one seat, recorded against the organisation, so you can see how many colleagues are using it.
Controls. Share the key internally. Ask us if you need it changed or a seat released.
Signed out
Every screen is still reachable without signing in, and the counts, scores, dates and geography are all shown. Report headlines, summaries and links to the original articles are the part that is held back.
Controls. Look around before signing in if you want to see the shape of the record first.
Next. Once you are in, the overview is the place to start.
02Overview
Open the overviewThe entry screen. It holds a watch list of health situations across East Africa and the Horn and a map of where outbreak-risk situations are. The tracked Ebola outbreak has its own record, reached from Outbreaks in the menu.
Watch list
Health situations in ten countries, each with a country, an attention score and the disease where reporting names one. Outbreak risk lists active and suspected outbreaks; the second tab holds preparedness, response and background reporting. An entry without a named disease appears as unknown only when the reporting itself describes an unexplained illness.
Controls. Select an entry to see the reporting behind it. Filter by country, and switch between the two tabs.
Country map
Countries shaded by their strongest outbreak-risk situation. Lines mark borders where two neighbouring countries both carry signal in the same period.
Controls. Select a country to list its situations, or a border to see the situations on either side of it.
Next. Outbreaks in the menu leads to the full record for each tracked outbreak.
03Outbreak record
Open the DRC Ebola recordEverything held on a single outbreak, on one screen. The record opens on the case and death trajectory and the map, with the severity history below them. The DRC Ebola record is the worked example throughout.
Current level and phase
The severity score over a rolling 24 hours, and the phase: escalating, cooling, holding high, or steady.
Controls. Change the period to see the level over a longer or shorter window.
Case and death curve
Official case and death counts, an independently reconstructed series, and a current estimate with a range. The reconstructed series has points on dates the official series has not yet reached.
Controls. Switch between cases and deaths. Select any point for the figures recorded on that date.
Transmission
Growth rate per day, the time it takes to double or halve at that rate, and the reproduction number with a range, given separately for official and estimated figures so the two can be compared rather than merged.
Controls. Change the window the rate is fitted over to see whether a turning point holds across windows or rests on one week of reporting.
Geographic spread
Places named in reporting on this outbreak. A marker sits at each named place, sized by the number of reports naming it and coloured by category: cases and deaths, alerts and investigation, or response and policy. Reports naming only a country shade that country instead of placing a marker.
Controls. Select a marker or a shaded country to open the reports behind it in the side panel, sorted by date, type or severity. Use the category filter to show one category at a time. Use the period control below the map to move through time.
Response strain and cross-border
Two measures over the selected period: the share of events recording pressure on the response, including strikes, attacks on responders, community resistance and insecurity; and the share concerning movement across a border.
Controls. Select either measure to list the events counted in it.
Event stream
Distinct developments rather than individual articles: an outbreak declaration, a border closure, a vaccination campaign. Each groups the articles covering it, with its sources and the dates each reported.
Controls. Select an event to see every source that reported it and when. Filter by event type.
Next. Selecting an event opens its record. Selecting All events moves to the full stream across every monitored outbreak and country.
04Events
Open the event streamEvery event across all monitored outbreaks and countries, newest first, independent of any single outbreak record.
Event list
The full stream, with each event showing its type, country, severity, date and the number of sources reporting it.
Controls. Filter by type, country and period. Select an event to open its record and its sources.
Next. Selecting a source on any event moves to that outlet’s record.
05Open record
Open sourcesThe outlets and feeds the platform reads, and what each has contributed.
Source list
Each outlet with the number of articles it has contributed, the period it has been read over, and the languages it publishes in.
Controls. Select an outlet to list the events its reporting contributed to.
Next. Selecting an event returns to the outbreak record it belongs to.
06Alerts
Open alertsA preview of alert rules: what each rule would have flagged over the last sixty days. The page shows the result on screen and does not send alerts.
Rules and their history
Each rule can be switched on or off, and the severity threshold can be set. Every rule is run across the last sixty days and the result is shown beneath, grouped by rule, with how many days each one fired on.
Controls. Read the firing rate before switching a rule on. A rule that fires on most days will be read as a feed rather than as a warning.
Next. Source profiles explain the standing figures that appear beside every report.
07Source profiles
Open the record and select a sourceEvery outlet in the record has a profile, and that profile has a history.
An outlet over time
Reliability, timeliness, how often the outlet is first to report an event, and how steady its record has been, each plotted across the period we have scored it. The header states how many times it has been scored.
Controls. Select an outlet name anywhere it appears. Treat a trend from only a few scoring days as provisional; the page says when that applies.
Next. That is the route through. Every screen is reachable from the sidebar.
Figure-level definitions
Each figure on the platform has a definition at the point it appears, reached through the marker beside it. The definition states what the figure counts, the period it covers and the units it is expressed in.