From West Africa in 2014 to the Bundibugyo outbreak in DRC and Uganda in 2026, GeoPoll has spent greater than a decade gathering knowledge inside illness outbreaks when different strategies can not attain affected communities. Here’s what now we have discovered and what we provide to companions responding now.
On 15 Might 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared its seventeenth Ebola outbreak. Inside 48 hours, the World Well being Group declared a Public Well being Emergency of Worldwide Concern. As of late Might, greater than 1,200 suspected and confirmed circumstances had been reported with over 260 deaths. The outbreak is brought on by Bundibugyo virus, a uncommon Ebola pressure for which no accepted vaccine but exists. Imported circumstances have been confirmed in Uganda, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
For GeoPoll, the information triggered a direct query that has pushed our work for the previous twelve years: how will we accumulate dependable, consultant knowledge from communities that area groups can not safely or simply attain, quick sufficient to tell a reside response.
This text walks via GeoPoll’s printed expertise supporting responses to Ebola, COVID-19, cholera, and Mpox throughout Africa and Asia, and lays out what we provide companions now.
The place it started: West Africa, 2014
The 2014 to 2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak killed practically 12,000 folks throughout Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. It additionally grew to become the second that cell knowledge assortment in humanitarian crises moved from promising concept to operational actuality.
When the outbreak peaked, GeoPoll was finalising its SMS survey system in Liberia. As we documented within the Journal of Well being Communication, that timing meant we may start operating surveys instantly. We didn’t must construct infrastructure from scratch in the midst of a disaster. The identical is true immediately. Our platform, panel, and cell community operator integrations are in place within the affected nations earlier than the subsequent outbreak begins.
What we did throughout the West Africa outbreak
Within the years that adopted, our SMS and CATI surveys in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea lined a spread of programme questions. A number of of those initiatives are documented in printed case research and peer-reviewed work:
- Meals safety monitoring with the United Nations World Meals Programme. Over three months in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, we collected indicators on meals costs, wages, and family coping. The work tailored the lowered Coping Methods Index for cell supply, with prior validation exhibiting no important distinction between cell and face-to-face assortment. Case examine.
- Market performance monitoring for the Famine Early Warning Methods Community. Panel-based SMS surveys with market merchants in Sierra Leone and Liberia, monitoring market sizes, working prices, inventory ranges, and agricultural exercise via ten rounds. Case examine.
- Lengthy-term financial affect surveys for the USAID Bureau for Africa and FHI360. 13 rounds of nationally stratified surveys in Liberia and Sierra Leone between January and June 2015, monitoring revenue, employment, meals costs, and education. Pattern base of 1.8 million in Sierra Leone and 1.6 million in Liberia, with 1,000 completes per nation per spherical. Case examine.
- Well being communications analysis with Johns Hopkins College in Liberia. SMS-based group dialogue and hearsay monitoring, supporting Ebola threat communication and group engagement. Documented within the educational literature.
- Neighborhood perceptions in Sierra Leone with Keystone Accountability. Assessing how the inhabitants considered the worldwide group’s response in actual time.
Throughout the West Africa outbreak, GeoPoll reached greater than 100,000 folks. The strategies labored as a result of the folks we surveyed already had entry to cell phones, our community operator integrations meant respondents incurred no price to take part, and the SMS and voice modes didn’t require enumerators to enter quarantine zones or therapy areas.
What we discovered
Three operational classes from 2014 to 2016 nonetheless form how we run surveys throughout outbreaks immediately:
- Preserve surveys brief. On SMS, response charges drop sharply past 12 to fifteen questions. The constraint forces self-discipline on what we ask.
- Pre-code open-ended questions. 160-character limits and noisy environments imply structured response choices outperform free textual content for many use circumstances.
- All the time supply airtime credit score on completion. Small incentives (now we have usually used the native equal of about USD 0.50) considerably enhance completion charges amongst low-income respondents.
Past West Africa: outbreaks within the DRC and the jap hall
Between 2018 and 2020, the DRC skilled two extra massive Ebola outbreaks within the jap a part of the nation, primarily in North Kivu and Ituri. GeoPoll deployed cell surveys throughout these outbreaks as properly, centered on socio-economic affect and data circulate. By the point we entered the COVID-19 period in 2020, we had successfully constructed a playbook for outbreak response work and utilized it throughout an increasing set of geographies and well being threats.
Our expertise now spans the key well being emergencies of the final decade:
- Ebola: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea (2014 to 2016) and the DRC (2018 to 2020)
- COVID-19: 30+ nations throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the Center East and North Africa, and Asia
- Cholera: Zambia (2024) and different African geographies
- Mpox: DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Central African Republic, and Kenya (2024)
- Different infectious illness and vaccine work: malaria, polio, measles, yellow fever, and routine immunisation research throughout a number of African nations
COVID-19: when the playbook scaled
When COVID-19 reached sub-Saharan Africa in 2020, the strategies we had refined for Ebola scaled up in a single day. Between 2020 and 2022, GeoPoll ran self-funded and partner-funded analysis throughout greater than 30 nations, masking financial affect, meals safety, vaccine acceptance, and threat communication. Findings from our November 2020 vaccine acceptance examine throughout Cote d’Ivoire, the DRC, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa had been archived publicly in ICPSR and utilized by researchers and coverage makers globally.
We continued monitoring vaccine perceptions throughout a number of rounds. The April 2021 follow-up, reported on the GeoPoll weblog, discovered that fewer than half of respondents (48 p.c) felt that they had been given sufficient reliable details about the vaccine, a discovering that mirrored what we had been seeing on the bottom.
The COVID work cemented two ideas we now apply by default in outbreak analysis:
- Multi-mode is non-negotiable. SMS reaches the broadest base however limits depth. CATI handles longer devices and complicated skip logic. Cellular internet reaches smartphone-heavy segments. In-person fills gaps for offline populations. One of the best outbreak research mix modes by design, not as a fallback.
- Belief issues greater than attain. A consultant pattern of people that refuse to reply actually is just not a pattern. We put money into respondent id verification, plain-language consent, and call-centre coaching in native languages as a result of belief in the mean time of the interview drives knowledge high quality.
Mpox: turning prior expertise into speedy mobilisation
When mpox started spreading via Central and Jap Africa in 2024, GeoPoll moved into the response inside weeks. As we wrote on the time, the parallels with earlier outbreaks had been clear: a illness transferring sooner than conventional surveillance, vaccine hesitancy reshaping its trajectory, and demand from public well being companions and pharmaceutical corporations for granular, real-time knowledge.
By way of late 2024 we ran mpox vaccine acceptance and behavior monitoring rounds throughout six African nations: DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Central African Republic, and Kenya. The DRC mpox vaccine acceptance work has since been printed in peer-reviewed medical literature and stays one of many largest mobile-based mpox research on report from that interval.
Cholera Zambia: a public-good knowledge drop in the midst of a disaster
In early 2024, whereas Zambia was managing a cholera outbreak that had contaminated greater than 21,000 folks and triggered over 700 deaths, GeoPoll ran a self-funded nationwide CATI survey to grasp public consciousness, water and sanitation entry, and behavior change. The findings had been launched as a public report on ReliefWeb with an interactive dashboard. The examine used a stratified random pattern of 400 respondents drawn from our Zambia panel, delivered in English, Bemba, and Nyanja from our Lusaka name centre.
The purpose of that work was not industrial. It was to show one thing that we imagine issues greater than any single examine: in a disaster, the suitable response is to collect and share knowledge shortly, even when there isn’t any shopper paying for it.
What we provide companions responding to the 2026 outbreak
The potential that an organisation wants throughout an outbreak is just not summary. It’s a brief listing of sensible issues, performed shortly and properly. Here’s what we provide.
Cellular knowledge assortment throughout a number of modes
We run surveys via the channels respondents truly use. Most outbreak research mix these by design:
- SMS surveys: Free-to-user through cell community operator integrations. Finest for broad attain, brief devices, and reaching low-income or rural populations. Used closely in our Ebola, COVID, and cholera work.
- Pc Assisted Phone Interviewing (CATI): Stay calls from our name centres in Nairobi, Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, and Panama Metropolis. Finest for longer devices, advanced skip logic, delicate matters, and qualitative depth.
- Cellular internet (link-based): Surveys delivered through WhatsApp, SMS hyperlink, or different distribution. Finest for smartphone-heavy segments, image-based questions, and longer self-completion.
- GeoPoll App: Our smartphone software helps longer panels and incentivised monitoring research.
- In-person interviewing: The place offline populations or delicate observations are wanted, we deploy skilled area groups. Used selectively in our outbreak work, primarily for qualitative and validation functions.
Attain throughout affected geographies
GeoPoll has greater than 5 million profiled panelists and entry to over 250 million people throughout 64 nations. Within the geographies most related to the present Ebola outbreak, our panel and infrastructure are operational immediately:
- Democratic Republic of the Congo: energetic panel and call-centre capability. French, Lingala, Kiswahili, and Kinande supported.
- Uganda: energetic panel, English and main native languages.
- Adjoining at-risk nations: Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Kenya all have operational panels.
Pace when velocity issues
Outbreak response can not wait three months for fieldwork. Typical timelines for GeoPoll outbreak research:
| Exercise | SMS / cell internet | CATI |
| Questionnaire design and evaluation | 2 to three days | 2 to three days |
| Translation and localisation | 1 to 2 days | 1 to 2 days |
| Pilot and adjustment | 1 to 2 days | 1 to 2 days |
| Full area interval | 2 to five days | 5 to 10 days |
| Preliminary findings | 1 to 2 days after area | 2 to three days after area |
| Complete from kickoff to perception | 1 to 2 weeks | 2 to three weeks |
Methodology that holds as much as scrutiny
Outbreak analysis is learn by epidemiologists, donors, and ethics committees. Our default methodology is designed to move that scrutiny:
- CDC-aligned KAP frameworks. We design data, attitudes, and apply devices to be appropriate with established disease-response frameworks.
- Stratified random sampling. By gender, age, and geography. We report margins of error and confidence intervals persistently.
- IRB expertise. We’ve got participated in institutional evaluation board processes with universities and analysis companions. Our analysis follows ESOMAR and WAPOR moral requirements.
- Clear reporting. Each examine stories its pattern dimension, margin of error, languages, mode, and area interval. We don’t disguise methodology.
Senselytic for real-time qualitative evaluation
Outbreaks generate lots of qualitative sign: open-ended responses, call-centre notes, social listening, focus group transcripts. Senselytic, our AI-powered qualitative evaluation device, helps companions extract patterns from this materials in hours as an alternative of weeks. We used it to help evaluation on multi-country COVID and mpox research, and it’s a core functionality for the present Ebola response.
Two methods companions can interact with us
For the present Bundibugyo outbreak, we’re providing two complementary engagement choices. They will stand alone or run in parallel:
1. Commissioned analysis
Bespoke research designed round a single companion’s questions. Appropriate when you’ve gotten particular choice wants, geographic priorities, or contractual reporting necessities. Examples we’re geared up to run immediately embrace vaccine acceptance and intent, threat communication effectiveness, healthcare-seeking behaviour, hearsay and misinformation surveillance, meals safety and financial affect in affected zones, and case investigation help.
2. Ebola Outbreak Omnibus Survey
A shared, nationally consultant DRC survey the place a number of organisations contribute customized questions and obtain their very own solutions plus frequent themes. Prices are shared, fielding is quicker, and outcomes are comparable throughout collaborating organisations. Appropriate for companions who want knowledge however don’t require a full standalone examine. A parallel Uganda omnibus will run if there’s ample curiosity.
| Specification | DRC Omnibus |
| Pattern dimension | 1,000 completes, nationally consultant |
| Margin of error | Roughly 3.1% at 95% confidence |
| Modes | Smartphone and WhatsApp lead, SMS and CATI fall again |
| Languages | French and Lingala lead, Kiswahili and Kinande added in jap provinces |
| Discipline interval | 7 to 10 days |
| Customized questions per companion | Configurable, usually 5 to 10 |
| Price mannequin | Shared throughout individuals, per-question pricing |
Get in Contact
Bundibugyo Ebola has no accepted vaccine. The response will succeed or fail on case discovering, contact tracing, threat communication, and group belief. All 4 rely upon understanding what folks in affected areas truly imagine, know, concern, and wish. That understanding can’t be assumed and it can’t be sampled from clinic registers alone. It needs to be collected from folks, in their very own language, on a platform they already use.
GeoPoll has been gathering that form of knowledge via each main African outbreak of the final twelve years. The infrastructure is in place. The methodology is documented. The workforce is mobilised. We’re able to help companions engaged on this response, from public-good monitoring to bespoke programme analysis, from speedy omnibus participation to long-term monitoring research.
In each outbreak now we have labored on, the lesson has been the identical: velocity compounds. Choices made on Day 7 with imperfect knowledge are often higher than selections made on Day 30 with good knowledge. We’re constructed to ship on Day 7.
To be taught extra, focus on commissioned analysis, or to take part within the Ebola Outbreak Omnibus Survey, contact us.