From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Dr. Chike Ihekweazu, the former Director General of Nigeria Centre Disease Control (NCDC), has highlighted the steps NCDC and other relevant stakeholders took in 2020 that minimised the “expected” casualties from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Ihekweazu, highlighted the steps in a keynote address delivered at the APIN Public Health Initiatives’ Annual Health Symposium on the theme “Securing our future: Strengthening Global Health Security in Nigeria”, in Abuja.
He stressed the importance of a deliberate effort to protect and strengthen the health systems against unexpected public health threats as witnesseed in 2020 during COVID-19, and other years when Ebola and other epidemics broke out.
He said: “These deliberate effort and steps particularly from NCDC helped us to manage the COVID-19 and the catastrophe that would have besieged Nigerians. In 2016, we set out to build a digital infrastructure to guide our long-term operations at NCDC.
“We bulit digital infrastructure, communication and administrative systems. Data became cornerstone of NCDC operations. We digitalised sample collection and tracking systems, as well as other administrative systems. We strengthenend our administrative and communication processes to enable all staff members represent the Agency well.
“We never knew we were not just preparing for the next disease outbreak, but were preparing for unknown disease outbreaks, and then came 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that hit world by storm, including Nigeria.
“It was the ground work that we did four years earlier that served as strong platform for the response and management of the pandemic. We responded the way it would have been completely unthinkable if the pandemic had happened four years earlier, 2016.
“It was the digital systems that we built before then that enabled us to track the cases in real time. Our communication team were better equipped to provide daily update to the public thus helping to curb misinformation and establish a management framework for response.
“It was the website that we developed in 2016 that became the cornerstone of everything we did, including collecting surveillance data and the travel portal that people used to reopen our economy.
“It was the human and technical infrastructures that we built that enabled us to easily and quickly established isolation centres, testing centres, and distributed critical supplies nationwide, provide critical information to Nigerians, and much more.
“Unknowingly, we prepared for the future we could not foresee. We made mistakes, and learnt along the way, but it was the systems that we built in 2016 that helped us to respond to the pandemic, and made us raise our heads up, and not be a laughing stock in the comity of nation.”
Dr. Ihekweazu, who currently serve as the Assistant Director-General, World Health Organisation (WHO), Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems, however, called for local investments in domestic institutions to drive health security of Nigerians.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, in her remarks, said the Federal Government was working towards a “One Health” approach to ensure that it has unlimited resources to be able to integrate all programmes and tackle health issues with effective response.
The Minister, represented by the Director, Port Health Services, Dr. Nse Akpan, said the approach was important to contain and eliminate all diseases of importance in the country, and ensure that long term plans were in place to ensure that the elimination and eradication were achieved.
“So, we need to work collectively to ensure that we achieve this. The government cannot do it alone, we need more stakeholders to come together and see how we can tackle these diseases.”
Pate said he was glad the country was facing its health challenges head-on, as a time may come when development partners may not be able to come to the country’s aid.
Speaking about the symposium, Dr. Prosper Okonkwo, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of APIN, explained that APIN, through the symposiums seeks to influence policies, improve health service delivery, and set the stage for the sustained progress of the Nigerian public health landscape in the future.
He said that climate change has brought about a lot of new diseases, while those that had declined were re-emerging, thus giving rise to concerns.
“So, we are seeking ways we could make our health systems better and ready when unexpected disease outbreaks happen. The example that we had was COVID-19, and for countries where their systems were okay, COVID weakened it and for countries that were already weak, COVID finished it,” he said.
