Digital tools promise to track diseases faster, but they face real hurdles in India's fight against dengue. A review of two high-burden districts in western India reveals why these systems often fail to deliver clear early warnings. The study looked at the people and processes behind the data, not just the numbers on a screen.
The reality on the ground is messy. Only 13% of the public health laboratories that should be working are actually functional. Four out of more than 30 districts lack the sentinel hospitals needed to catch outbreaks early. Field staff report that information flows are broken, separating medical data from the social factors that cause disease. They also face pressure to meet reporting targets rather than focusing on accurate data quality.
These challenges are not about the technology itself but about how it fits into daily work. Staff deal with overlapping programs and community resistance that slows everything down. The review notes that limited resources make these problems harder to solve. Strengthening how different systems talk to each other and embedding social factors into routine checks could help. Until then, digital tools remain an incomplete solution for protecting communities from dengue.
