By Zivanai Dhewa
National University of Science and Technology (NUST) final year student in Computer Sciences, Charmaine Matsaudza has created a new application system on Infectious Disease Mapping in Zimbabwe.
Speaking in an interview during the UNESCO Regional Conference on Knowledge Societies for Sustainable Development in Africa in Harare recently, Charmaine explained her motivation for creating the new application system.
“From the 4th of September to the 3rd of October, 8 340 possibly preventable cases of Cholera were reported in 2018 in Zimbabwe alone.
“Early detection and immediate response is crucial for disease control, those challenges have led to the need for new approaches in technologies in re-enforcing capacity of traditional methods of awareness. This is the problem I’m trying to achieve in this project,” Matsaudza said.
She further added that, “The way the Application works is that the hospitals and clinics act as the input and the system maps out these report systems.
“It can be used by tourists that are visiting the country, health officials looking at incident mapping, locals that want to know incidences in their area and virtually anyone who wants access to this information can access it through the platform,” she concluded.
Matsaudza’s final project to design the Awareness Incident Mapping System Application for tracking cholera incident zones is in line with government initiative to model university and college curricula, of aligning them with the modern job market and broad economic growth fundamentals.
Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Amon Murwira is on record saying his Ministry is running with President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s vision for higher and tertiary learning institutions to produce graduates best-suited to industry on top of evolving into mega hubs of research and innovation that proffer solutions to emerging challenges in the national economy.
