The sentinel surveillance approach is conceived to investigate and alert about the possible hazards that might be dangerous and affect the health of a group of people or a population. In BioNet project, the sentinel surveillance approach will enable training and reinforcing knowledge of African occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals in exposure assessment, monitoring of occupational hazards, and human biomonitoring. This will also serve as a signal for occupational health and safety stakeholders and for public health authorities to detect occupational hazards and provide alternatives and preventive actions for the health protection of the African working population.
Within BioNet project, the sentinel surveillance system will be implemented in the three African partner countries, namely Morocco, Benin and Ethiopia.
The strategy of sentinel surveillance implementation in Africa is to train physicians and nurses on occupational health, environmental hazards and human biomonitoring and invite them to collect data among workers in occupational settings for exposure assessment to potentially hazardous chemicals and pollutants. This is the object of BioNet pilot study, in which 30 physicians will play the role of sentinels for a participation of 1500 workers in each country. Sentinels will have the main role to recruit workers that will be requested to participate in an online survey for exposure assessment at work.
A Human Sentinel Survey Platform (HSSP) has been developed and made accessible for occupational safety and health professionals. Sentinel actors can be occupational physicians and nurses, occupational health providers, general practitioners and medical staff. This platform is a gate for the creation of sentinel network, in which physicians and medical practitioners acting as sentinels from different countries can share knowledge and expertise about exposure assessment and biomonitoring. Also, this platform is practical tool that bring different projects together for the collection of good quality data.
The BioNet pilot study has the specific objective to build capacities among occupational safety and health in Africa on occupational assessment, human biomonitoring and data collection and aims to contribute to the protection of African workers’ health by providing reliable data and recommendations, for policy change and amelioration.