Building a Community Health Information Portal for Primary Healthcare Centres in Delta State

Primary healthcare centres in Delta State face persistent challenges in disseminating health information to rural communities, limiting public awareness of preventable diseases and available health services. This study describes the design and implementation of a community health information portal for primary healthcare centres across selected communities in Delta State, South South Nigeria. The portal was developed using the Django web framework with a PostgreSQL database, and responsive design was achieved using Bootstrap to ensure compatibility across mobile devices. Functional requirements were derived from structured interviews with healthcare workers at eight PHCs in Oshimili South and Ethiope East LGAs. Core portal features include disease surveillance bulletins, vaccination schedules, maternal and child health guidelines, and a community health worker directory. Role-based access control separates administrative users from public-facing content. User acceptance testing involved 25 community health workers and 40 community members from the target communities. Results from post-testing questionnaires indicated that 88 percent of community health workers found the portal easy to navigate, while 76 percent of community members stated it improved their awareness of available PHC services. The portal reduced the time needed to update community health bulletins from a reported average of three days to under one hour. The study concludes that low-cost web portals can significantly improve health information delivery at the community level in Delta State and recommends integration with the State Ministry of Health's digital health strategy.

Keywords: health information portal, primary healthcare, Delta State, community health, web development