DHIS2 for Humanitarian and Fragile Settings

Humanitarian crises, whether conflict, displacement, disease outbreaks, or natural disasters disrupt essential services precisely when timely, reliable data matters most. Digital platforms like DHIS2 provide a foundation for collecting, managing, and analyzing data across sectors in these settings, whether deployed by a government ministry responding to a sudden influx of displaced people, an NGO running mobile services in a conflict zone, or a cluster coordinating response across dozens of partner organizations.

As a scalable and configurable platform, DHIS2 serves as the backbone for information systems in some of the world’s most difficult operating environments, supporting use cases such as disease surveillance and early warning, individual and beneficiary tracking, commodity and supply chain management, and cluster-level coordination across health, nutrition, education, protection, WASH, and other sectors. DHIS2 can be deployed quickly, works with or without reliable internet connectivity, and is built to be locally owned and adapted rather than dependent on any single implementing partner.

DHIS2 is used across the humanitarian sector by a wide range of actors alongside government ministries. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), alongside many National Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations use DHIS2 for field operations and global monitoring. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) runs it as its core health information system across field projects worldwide and UN agencies including UNICEF, WHO and UNHCR have supported DHIS2 deployments in humanitarian settings and fragile operating environments. International NGOs such as Samaritan’s Purse and PSI use DHIS2-based platforms to manage multi-sector programming beyond health alone.

The IFRC recently formalized its collaboration with HISP UiO to strengthen the use of DHIS2 across the IFRC network, supporting emergency response, health information management, and digital capacity development through close engagement with local HISP groups and regional HISP hubs. 

DHIS2 also supports cross-sector data integration, linking data across health, nutrition, education, and logistics information to support a more complete picture of needs during a crisis.

While the features above are broadly applicable, DHIS2 has been adapted to support humanitarian response across multiple regions and crisis types. The examples below show how governments, NGOs, and international organizations are leveraging DHIS2 in humanitarian responses.

• Immunization in conflict settings: In northwest Syria, the Assistance Coordination Unit used a DHIS2-based e-Tracker to manage immunization data across its network of centers during the country’s civil war, registering more than 242,000 children and helping health workers follow up with families who miss appointments. 
• Displacement response and cross-border referral: Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population rolled out a DHIS2 tracker in 45 days to screen displaced Sudanese children and women for malnutrition, later extending the platform to coordinate hospital care for Palestinians referred from Gaza to Egyptian facilities. 
• Reproductive health data under conflict: Palestine’s Ministry of Health, with support from UNFPA, launched a real-time dashboard on DHIS2 to track sexual and reproductive health services for more than 545,000 women in Gaza, helping identify service gaps despite the near-total collapse of the territory’s health infrastructure. 
• Health commodity management: The International Committee of the Red Cross integrated DHIS2 with its institutional supply chain management system to improve pharmacy stock visibility, piloted at health facilities in Somalia. 
• National recovery after conflict In Syria: The Ministry of Health has worked with international partners to scale DHIS2 as part of the country’s broader health system recovery, following a 2025 workshop in Damascus on strengthening national health information infrastructure. 

The examples below show how countries and organizations leverage DHIS2 in humanitarian contexts.