Moving from epidemic response to epidemic preparedness
[Music]
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
[Music]