The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has inaugurated the
National Action Plan for Health Security for the Year 2018 to 2022, to
strengthen response in 19 public health threats and improve response to
health emergencies.
Inaugurating the plan on Monday in Abuja, the
minister said the implementation would help to entrench and resolve to
build a safer and prosperous Nigeria.
Adewole said that Nigeria
had a Joint External Evaluations of the International Health Regulations
in June 2017, which demonstrated many critical gaps that needs to be
filled to protect the country from next major event.
“As I
listened to the result of the evaluation we scored 40 per cent, which is
failure, in medical school you need to score 50 per cent in medical
school to record a pass.
“We are deeply worried about the result,
and then I did remark that we should be bothered about the base line
and what happened thereafter.
“This result has helped to guide
the NAPHS planning processes and to develop a roadmap for security
strengthening in Nigeria,’’ the minister said.
Adewole noted that preparedness for health security is like an insurance policy for the national health prosperity.
“Although
we hope that we never face a deadly epidemic like the West Africa Ebola
epidemic of 2014-2016, we need to ensure that we are ready at all the
time,’’ he said.
He added that Nigeria was making progress in the
emergency response programmes and other several areas, stressing that
‘’Mr President receives weekly update on the state of national health
emergency in Nigeria, to me that is unusual.’’
He noted that
while Nigeria was making progress in national health emergency, the
development of the National Action Plan for Health Security was what was
required to achieve more success.
Earlier, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu,
the Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said
that the framing of the plan was to demonstrate that health doesn’t only
have health benefit but also provide economic and security benefit.
He
said there was need to come together and jointly own a response across
the 19 areas, including surveillance, port health, immunisation and
medical counter measures, among others, in order to achieve desired
results.
He said the five-year plan include collaborative efforts from many stakeholders integrates preparedness and response.
The
director-general said the plan articulates all aspects of what to be
done, it set out desirables, milestone to be achieve and provides
platform for bringing everyone together.
He added that major
initiatives that have been identified to come out of the plan includes
digitalisation of disease surveillance across the country; building
strong laboratory architecture, and building epidemiology workforce at
every level.
Similarly, the Director-General, World Health
Organisation (WHO), Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said keeping the world safe
was one of the organisation’s top priorities, adding that global health
security is a shared responsibility.
Represented by the Officer
in Charge WHO Nigeria, Dr Clement Lasuba, the director-general said
scaling up and financing the implementation of the International Health
Regulations was vital for building sustainable capacities to detect and
respond to emergencies.
He added that the best defence against
outbreaks and other crises was strong, resilient health system based on
people-centred primary care.
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