On 15 October, the GRID3 Mapping for Health team at Flowminder launched a country-wide phone survey in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The GRID3 Mapping for Health project in DRC aims to strengthen the effectiveness and equity of the country’s vaccination interventions; data from the phone survey will inform the production of mobility estimates (based on Call Detail Records, CDR) used to design these interventions. 

The responses will also help the team analyse the CDR data and understand how demographics and mobility vary among subscribers of different mobile network operators in the DRC; among subscribers in different regions; and among those who use their phones often and those who do not. 

“We asked mobile phone users to tell us about trips they have taken, if they have recently moved, and how they are using their phones. This will enable us to better interpret the patterns we are seeing in the aggregated CDR data and therefore produce more valuable insights about mobility and internal migration in DRC, which in turn will help health actors plan more efficiently,”

says Roland Hosner, Flowminder’s Survey Statistician.

Completed the first week of November, the survey included respondents from all the country’s provinces and interviewed a total of 7,500 people. 

GRID3 Mapping for Health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a Ministry of Health initiative, supported by Gavi through its INFUSE programme and implemented by Flowminder and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. The project is a continuation of previous work supported in DRC by GRID3.

This article was adapted from a story that appeared on the Flowminder website, available here.