CDC partners Public Health Emergency Management …Trains over two hundred responders in 7 years.

The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, US – CDC, has partnered with Nigeria to strengthen the capacity of selected professionals in Public Health Emergency Management, PHEM, and Intermediate Certification Courses, to ensure prompt response to public health emergencies.

The CDC US CDC programme Director of Global Health Protection,  Farah Husain, who made this known during the Graduation of 55 PHEM 3rd and 4th cohorts in Lagos, explained that the periodical meeting was to highlight some areas of work with Nigeria and the impact ofn disease control at National and sub-National levels.

“The US – CDC has supported Nigeria’s global health security agenda over the years and efforts to achieve the 2024 targets of collaboration in advancing public health”. She explained.

Dr. Husain emphasised that the US CDC, through its Global Health Security funding, is building capacity and supporting national and state-level disease outbreak response.

She said; “CDC will continue to collaborate with Nigeria and Centre for Disease and Control, state ministries of health and CDC implementing partners to deliver this important programme and help strengthen work capacities outlines and the IHR requirements for improved disease outbreak response in Nigeria.”

Highlighting further on some achievements, Dr. Muhammad Saleh of the US – CDC said, to tackle multiple disease outbreaks, the need to build public health experts’ capacity in emergency preparedness and response becomes imperative.

According to him, “Nigeria has been a Global Health Security Agenda partner country since 2019 and is committed to attaining the goal of “making the world safe and secure from global health threats posed by infectious diseases.”

Saleh said and I quote, ” out of the 223 international public health emergency management PHEM fellows from 49 countries trained by CDC in Atlanta, U.S., only seven were from Nigeria, creating the need to locally expand PHEM capacity to support the operations of PHEOCS.

“Catastrophic events like pandemics, natural disasters and emergence (re- emergence) of high-threat disease can affect any country at any time.

“The PHEM programme contributes to achieving a stronger public health workforce that can adequately respond to health emergencies.

“It improves public health personnel’s knowledge, skills and attitudes toward emergencies. “It helps build a culture of emergency management and resiliency for stakeholders.

“It provides specialised training in PHEM care capabilities that are critical to preparedness and response,” Saleh said

The Director, Health Emergency Preparedness and Response, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, NCDC, Doctor John Oladejo, noted that the newly acquired skills were valuable, in surveillance of disease outbreak response while training and developing a network of Public Health Experts.

Oluwatoni Adeyemi who is the Senior Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor on Health, explained that, the collaboration between the United States Centre for Disease Control, NCDC and the Nigerian government is critical in advancing Nigeria health system.

Adeyemi said;” We all know how we’ve been plagued with so many public health emergencies of late, unfortunately Lagos State is the epicenter for some of this epidemic. When COVID came, we were hit. adding that, Ebola was the same thing, So we’re glad that this training is taking place here.

” The public health emergency program, as we all are aware, is instrumental and a key pillar to ensure that we have the capacity to detect, to respond and also manage public health crisis effectively.” she noted

She said that with the ever-evolving global health landscape, a well-trained workforce is very important in Lagos State and Nigeria.e

“It is very gladdening to see the progress that has been made through this programme which I’m made to understand has started since 2019. Its impact in Nigeria, even at sub-national levels and state levels are far-reaching, and we are glad that Lagos State is also a beneficiary.”

Dr Oluwatoni Adeyemi, called for more collaborations with the States, as this is critical to advancing Nigeria’s health system towards responding and managing public health emergencies efficiently.