Poor Response To Health Emergencies : FG, WHO Institutes SURGE-Team

The Federal Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have strengthened the capacity of the Federal Capital Territory Administration’s (FCTA) staff to effectively respond to health emergencies.

Acting Secretary, FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat (HHSS), Mr Malan Haruna who made this known in Abuja, said the initiative tagged “Scooping Mission on Strengthening and Utilising Response Groups for Emergencies (SURGE) was meant to address inadequacies militating against prompt response to public health issues.

Mr Haruna explained that the SURGE will help Health workers in the territory to identify loopholes with a view to improving prompt responses to health challenges in the future across its accredited 234 public primary health facilities, 23 secondary facilities and the 3 tertiary facilities.

He decried the absence of a functional infectious diseases hospital and inadequate human resource in the FCT.

“…there is a system for containment of public health emergencies including the availability of a policy and plan on disease outbreak response.
However, there is no functional infectious diseases hospital in the FCT.

“The FCTA is making efforts to bridge the gap in human resource through the recruitment of medical officers, but the number remains inadequate.The HHSS is also collaborating with the Health Workforce Management to strengthen capacity of health workers for better service delivery in the FCT.

“We have seen our inadequacies over the years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of our ability to respond to the pandemic.We have learned from that experience, and we are trying to build from it so that we will be able to respond to health emergencies in a more coordinated manner.” Haruna said.

The Director Public Health, HHSS, Dr Abdulrahman Sadiq, said adequate preparedness against outbreak of diseases was a sure way to go in tackling any pandemic or epidemic.

“This is prepared to respond to public health emergencies,” he said.

Also speaking the Director Public Health, Federal Ministry of Health, Morenike Alex-Okoh, represented by Dr Nse Akpan, Post Health Services in the ministry said the meeting would enable the partners to set up a robust health emergency response team that can respond to public health threat at any time.

Earlier, the Coordinator, African Volunteer Corps for SURGE in Nigeria, WHO Country Office, Dr Kumshida Balami, said that the scoping mission was designed to assess the status of FCT’s capacity in response to health emergencies.

Balami said that the activity, which would last up to July 22, would engage stakeholders in the health sector and assess their capacity to respond to emergencies.

She identified some of the challenges affecting emergency response to include human resource, lack of motivation and short supplies of consumables needed to be able to attend to affected persons during emergencies.

Remi Johnson, Edited By Grace Namiji