Vanguard Newspapers has won the Global Editors Network #HackAgainstEbola competition in Nigeria.

The organisation won the Editors Lab with the EbolaGo apps, an information apps which gives users relevant information such as news, articles, photos, videos and data on the dreaded disease, held at Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.

Voice of Nigeria with HackAgainstEbola was rated  second, while the University of Lagos, UNILAG, earned the third position with EbolaShield.     Other competitors at the event include The Nation Newspapers, Channels TV, Television Continental, TVC, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Tell Magazine and Yes Magazine among others.

The winning apps, EbolaGo is web, mobile and SMS based, enabling phone users without internet access to send a short code.  It connects users to the nearest doctors/hospitals, doctors to users.

The Vanguard team to the Editors Lab include Deputy Online Editor, Adekunle Aliyu and Deputy IT Manager, Joseph Omeike. They will represent Nigeria at the Hackathon during the 2015 Global Editors Network Summit holding in Barcelona, Spain.

The event which brought together the best media innovators in Nigeria to develop news prototypes to better prevent and cover Ebola was sponsored by Google and International Centre for Journalists. It was organised by the Global Editors Network, in partnership with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).

Nigeria’s #HackAgainstEbola is the second of three Editors Lab which focused on Ebola. The first was held in Accra, Ghana (19-20 November, 2014), while the next one will be in Dakar, Senegal (January, 2015).

The Paris-based Global Editors Network is a cross-platform community committed to sustainable, high-quality journalism, empowering newsrooms through a variety of programmes.