Daily zero-reporting for suspect Ebola using short message service (SMS) in Guinea-Bissau.

•As of September 2015, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has claimed over 10,000 lives.•Zero-reporting is a key surveillance strategy for disease elimination.•Real-time, SMS-based, daily zero-reporting can be implemented in a rapid, simple way in a low resource country.•The real-time, zero-reporting through SMS model could be useful for rapid scale-up and implementation of alert systems in other outbreaks and public health emergencies.