Moving from epidemic response to epidemic preparedness

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uh

currently there are more than 64 million

cases of

cov19 globally with above 44 million

recoveries

and sadly about 1.5 million deaths

across the u.s and europe kovie 19 still

rages

however if you look at the african

continent

you will see that there are fewer cases

on the african continent

and the question is why

now the answer lies in the fact that the

african continent

has been dealing with different kinds of

infectious diseases

and therefore has lent the importance of

investing

in epidemic preparedness

in 2015 our firm epi afric

evaluated the african union’s support

to ebola across west africa in guinea

liberia and sierra leone for two weeks i

led the team across those three

countries

interviewing different people to know

how the african union’s response

went we interviewed community members

we interviewed government officials

health workers ministry of

of health officials international

partners that were supporting the

response at that point in time and one

thing that was clear to us at the end of

that evaluation

was that africa needed to invest in

epidemic preparedness

knowing our peculiarities and also most

importantly

the african continent also needed to

take leadership

in coordinating infectious diseases

response across the continent

and so the africa cdc was born

from those recommendations african

countries went to work

in nigeria the nigeria center for

disease control in 2017

organized what is called a joint

external evaluation

or jee for short and what jee tries to

do

is to help a country know its

preparedness

to find to stop and to prevent

infectious disease outbreaks and by so

doing protect its citizens

at the end of that particular ge in

nigeria scored

39 percent which was our ready score

it meant that nigeria was not ready at

that point in time

and so the nigeria center for disease

control supported by different partners

went to work they went to work to fill

different gaps that were identified and

i think there are three gaps that are

very relevant

you know and underscore the kind of

response nigeria mounted against cov19

you cannot respond to an infectious

disease outbreak if you don’t have

good reliable and timely data

and to achieve this the nigeria center

for disease control had to invest

in digitizing the data collection

platform from a paper-based platform

to an electronic platform and as we

speak

all the 774 local governments in nigeria

are hooked up to a summers software

platform

for real-time electronic data collection

and of course ncdc is just an

agency of government it cannot do

everything on its own it needed

some national level states to take

responsibility and to achieve that

what ncdc did was from 2017

they started to support states to set up

what is called

public health emergency operation

centers that are run by the states

so that states can take leadership

within their domain

to find to stop and to prevent

infectious disease outbreaks and by so

doing protect their people

as we speak 31 out of the 37 states in

nigeria

have public health emergency observation

centers supported by the nigeria center

for disease control

and of course a very important aspect of

surveillance is having a good network

of laboratories as at the time

the first ge was done in 2017 nigeria

had just one national laboratory

as part of its network by the time we

started responding to cov19 after the

index case in february 2020 we had five

but now we have more than 90

laboratories molecular laboratories as

part of

our national network of laboratories

that means that

the nation is able to test faster

quicker

and respond to this particular outbreak

by the time the nigeria center for

disease control did another

jee a mid ge this time around in 2019

nigeria had appreciated in its course

from 39

to 46 which is

a nine percentage point increase and

that’s significant as far as epidemic

preparedness is concerned

so one begins to understand the kind of

response nigeria mounted against

convenience stream from these

levels of epidemic preparedness and why

you know we’re doing very well in that

response

however even in hardware we’ve done

we’ve also learned lessons

that we can take for future epidemic

preparedness

for instance we’ve learned that it is

much more cost effective to

invest in epidemic preparedness than

to respond to an infectious disease

outbreak

so because of this the federal

government of nigeria state governments

local councils must keep

investing in epidemic preparedness so

that we can nip it at the board

kovit 19 has shown us that once an

infectious disease outbreak happens it

can wipe off businesses economics

it can kill people

the second lesson that we’ve learned in

responding to this kovid 19 that would

help us prepare for future

outbreaks is the fact that the private

sector is a very important stakeholder

in responding to epidemics pandemics

in nigeria the coalition against kovid

19

otherwise known as kakovid really

is supporting the response heavily

they’ve raised more than 70 million

dollars to support the response

and those funds went into setting up

isolation centers

upgrading labs increasing our lab

networks providing palliatives

to poorer members of our society

and indeed palliatives is one of also

one of the lessons

that we’ve learned as far as responding

to this pandemic is concerned

because with kobe 19 cities were shut

down we’re unlocked down

and in our economy lots of people end on

a daily basis within the informal

economy and they needed some kind of

support

the poorer members of the society one

lesson we’ve learned is that

preparing for the next pandemic we need

to really invest more in our social

security sector

so that we can get it better next time

i’m also the director of a project in

nigeria health watch called hashtag

prevent epidemics niger

which have been running since 2018. and

we have a mantra

you know we’ve been repeating since 2018

that once it comes to infectious disease

outbreaks

it is no longer if they would happen

but when kovi 19 has shown us this

and because of this we really need to

invest in epidemic preparedness

however it’s a global village nigeria

cannot do it alone

africa cannot do it alone we have to

operate as a global community

i’m operating as a global community also

means that countries

richer countries that are still dealing

with kovid 19 must

swallow the bitter pill and learn from

africa and asia’s

response to kobe 19.

because at the end of the day it is

cheaper

to prepare for an epidemic than to

respond

to one thank you

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