The lack of relevant, credible data is compromising India’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Sharmadha Srinivasan, Anushka Bhansali and I write in TheWire.in on how we’ve reached here and provide recommendations on how the situation can be improved. In my view, the inherent data crisis that the pandemic has brought to light presents a policy window- allowing us to build effective data systems to improve governance in the long term.
Excerpts below: “The real boost to both the vaccination drive and to resolving this public health crisis can come from plugging the major data gaps (right from collection to dissemination) within the government. COVID-19 has highlighted the cracks in the system for many countries, all of whom are slowly catching up to the importance of plugging data gaps. Improvement in the collection, analysis and sharing of health data could pave the way for a faster recovery from this pandemic and become a part of the playbook for navigating all future public health crises.”
“Data will be a crucial piece of bettering public health and fighting future pandemics. Hence, institutionalising its use by developing processes for its collection, analysis and dissemination while providing effective safeguards for individual privacy by fast tracking data protection laws should be the way forward.”
Read the full article here.