By Fatima Saka
The Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with the World Health Organization initiated the first batch of core responders to counter emergencies within the 24 to 48 hours of its occurrence.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire on Friday in Abuja decorated the graduation ceremony of the 82 core responders.
With the theme “Capacity Building, Learning and Training to On-Board the AVoHC Strengthening and Utilizing Response Groups for Emergencies (SURGE) Team”.
Dr. Ehanire, stated that the 100 emergencies occur across Africa per week, causing damage to health and economic systems. Adding that there are public health emergencies that are already running quietly in the country.
“So our responsibility and our mandate goes beyond public health emergencies, which we are fully in support of, but there are others.
“We are losing up to 50,000 women every year in childbirth and that is a huge emergency. We are losing over 900,000 children every year.
“According to reports, we have 6,000 people killed in road traffic accidents every year and 17,000 from accidents who are maimed, permanently disabled every year. All of these are serious emergencies,” he said
The Minister emphasised that the SURGE initiative promotes availability of equipment, well equipped teams with everything streamlined to respond to emergencies within the specified time frame and the six pilot states are Abia, Yobe, Kano, Lagos, Edo and the Federal Capital Territory.
He said they would also fully align with the concept of the resilient and sustainable health system for improved health outcomes and Universal Health Coverage.
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He referred to it as a wealth of information that could turn around the detection and response time for emergencies within Nigeria and beyond.
Dr Walter Molumbo, WHO Country Representative in Nigeria, stated that the organization is committed to strengthening regional and sub-national capacity to prepare and respond to public health emergencies in an increasingly globalized, unionized and connected world.
He added that people always being on the move was giving rise to an amplifying threat of multiple infectious hazards, in addition to natural disasters, conflict, climate change and other emergencies.
He said that the programme was aimed at providing national and subnational Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) with key knowledge and tools needed to detect and effectively respond to public health emergencies as they occur.
He explained that “the SURGE programme identified five countries among which Nigeria is being chosen and in Nigeria, we have six states that have been selected to kick-start this process.
“We will be able to scale up the SURGE in the six pilot states but also go beyond to make sure that the entire country benefits from this initiative.
“It is our hope that the country will truly build on this to make sure that we put in place the capacities that are truly needed to respond to future outbreak.
“We look forward to leveraging on data and innovation to create a community of practice where other countries who learn from what will be happening in Nigeria use the workforce we are developing to support other countries in Africa during the worst emergencies,” he added.
Dr Kumdisha Balami, the Field Epidemiologist of WHO, said that the initiative would build on existing infrastructure to put in place a well organized and support system that would augment government capacity when needed.
This, she said, would be by incorporating lessons from COVID-19, Ebola and other health emergencies.
She, however, said that there are centres of excellence across the continent to support the flagship initiative.
