The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has pledge to support states to strengthen their health security capacity in 2021, Nature News gathered.
The Director-General of NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, gave the assurance in Abuja.
Ihekweazu noted that though the COVID-19 pandemic might have disrupted some plans, the agency had not relented in its efforts to strengthen health security at the subnational level.
This assurance was in fulfillment of the promise the commission made in December 2019 when it announced that plans were in the works to focus on supporting states to strengthen their health security capacity in 2020.
“We intend to complete the deployment of Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System (SORMAS) for case-based digital surveillance and Public Health Emergency Operations Centres in all the states.
“We will support states in establishing public health laboratories that will meet the basic diagnostic needs for each state. We will also support the strengthening of treatment centres so that every state in Nigeria will have a place to manage infectious disease cases.
“Our strategy will include strengthening the workforce for health security at the state level,” Ihekweazu said.
He, however, pointed out that the NCDC had spent the most part of 2020 spearheading the public health response in the aftermath of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, adding that notwithstanding the pandemic the agency had deployed SORMAS for casebased digital surveillance across the country.
According to him, the agency began the deployment of SORMAS in 2017 following lessons from the response to the outbreak of Ebola and other infectious diseases.
“The main justification of SORMAS was to eliminate the delays that were experienced in reporting of disease outbreaks from health facilities to local government to states and then to NCDC. It was also introduced to improve the efficiency of data collation and analysis.
“By the end of 2019, SORMAS had been deployed partially in only 17 states of the federation. This meant that more than half of the states in Nigeria did not have a digital case-based surveillance system.
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“However, as at September 17, 2020, NCDC had deployed SORMAS in all states (capital) and the 774 council areas.
“This meant that the surveillance officer in every local government and state had a device provided by NCDC with SORMAS application installed, and is trained to use this to report suspected and confirmed cases of infectious diseases.
“Throughout the year, NCDC reflected its commitment to providing accurate and complete data for infectious diseases through situation reports for diseases. The agency monitors and publishes a National Weekly Epidemiological Report,” he said.
Ihekweazu said the public health agency had also established state public health Emergency Operations Centres (EOCs).
“In April 2018, NCDC announced that it had begun the establishment of EOCs in states beginning with Zamfara State and by the end of 2019 it had reached 23 states.
“In 2020, NCDC continued the establishment of State EOCs, but did not reach the target of establishing EOCs in every state. However, it has established public health EOCs in 28 states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“Of the remaining states, seven of them have polio EOCs. These public health EOCs have been at the core of Nigeria’s COVID-19 response, used as coordination hubs for public health response activities,” he said.
Ihekweazu also noted that only Ogun and Jigawa had yet to have public health or polio EOCs.
