Privacy Policy

ZeroDose is a digital child-health and immunization system that supports the national Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) workflow — registering children and households, recording vaccinations, and reporting coverage. It is developed by MERQ Consultancy. This policy describes, in plain language, the categories of information the application may handle, how that information is used, and the choices available to authorized users.

Authorized users (health workers, supervisors, managers and administrators) may enter or view information needed to operate the system, including:

• Account details, such as username, full name, role, email address and phone number;
• Records of the people the service is for — children (names, date of birth, gender, caregiver contact details), households and their locations;
• Clinical workflow records — registrations, enumerations, screenings, consent acknowledgements, and vaccination histories;
• Operational records — facility and location references, task assignments, notifications, communication logs, and audit logs of who changed what.

The application also generates standard technical logs (such as HTTP access and application logs) that can include an IP address or device/session identifier, which are used to operate and protect the service.

• To provide the service — registration, immunization, household, facility and reporting functions;
• To support vaccination follow-up, reminders and outreach coordination;
• To verify identity and control access through role-based permissions;
• To investigate faults, protect the security of the system, and support users;
• To generate the dashboards and reports supervisors and managers rely on.

ZeroDose is an internal tool for authorized health-system personnel and is not made generally available to the public. Information is shared only on a need-to-know basis with the people and roles whose duties require access, and with service providers that host or operate the application on behalf of the program. The operators do not sell personal information. Information may otherwise be disclosed only where required by applicable law or a competent authority.

The application uses organizational and technical safeguards appropriate to a health-data system, including role-based access control, authenticated sessions, encrypted transport of network traffic, and audit logging of significant actions. No system can be guaranteed absolutely secure; the operators work to protect information but cannot promise that unauthorized access can never occur.

Records are retained only as long as they are needed for the purposes described in this policy and in line with applicable public-health record-keeping requirements, after which they are removed or anonymized where feasible. Destructive operations such as the cleanup of old logs require explicit, confirmed action by an administrator.

Authorized users manage their own account profile. If you believe information about you is inaccurate, or you need help with your account or its data, contact your program administrator or the support address below. The application records consent acknowledgements as part of its clinical workflow, and notices of consent are available to the health workers managing each record.

The application uses an authenticated session (stored in a secure session cookie) so that a signed-in user stays signed in during their use of the system. The browser's local storage is used to remember lightweight preferences such as interface theme and selected language. These mechanisms do not track you across other websites.

For questions about this policy or about information handled by the system, contact support at support@merqconsultancy.org.