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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Members of the ECOWAS Board of Directors on Disease Surveillance and Control, said on Thursday, that they have commenced review of approaches adopted so much in response to several epidemiological cases in West Africa.
The Board said the past seven years have provided opportunity for the regional body to respond to several public health challenges, notably, COVID-19, Marburg, Ebola, Monkeypox and several others, and there was need to re-strategize ahead of unexpected future disease outbreaks.
Director General of West Africa Health Organization (WAHO), Melchior Athanase J.C. AÏSSI, in his remarks at the opening ceremony of the 7th meeting of the board of directors of the ECOWAS Regional Center for Disease Surveillance and Control (CRSCM), in Abuja, said that in recent years, an average of 40 new outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases have been recorded in ECOWAS.
“This, if it were still necessary, highlights the need to continue to strengthen the capacity of the CRSCM to achieve the objective for which CRSCM was created, part of which was to strengthen capacities for surveillance, disease prevention, response and resilience to epidemics and other health emergencies in the ECOWAS region,” he said.
He appreciated the impressive and roboust participation from all delegates across the region, and reminded them about the objective of the meeting which, he said, was to discuss updates on the epidemiological situation in West Africa and find out the level of progress made from November 2021 to March 2023 in the CRSCM work plan.
He added that the meeting was also an opportunity to identify bottlenecks as well as appropriate corrective measures to support the activities of the CRSCM, and to plan the next steps as well as strengthen the structural and strategic operationalization of the CRSCM.
He said: “If irreversible progress has been made over the years in the context of health security in the ECOWAS region, then it is far from sufficient. Unacceptable gaps remain within and between countries.
“We can no longer view health security as a cost, but rather as an investment that forms the foundation of our productive, resilient and inclusive economies and societies.
“For this, we would like to emphasize the establishment of a consolidated community approach and sensitive alert mechanisms for the early detection of the main threats.
“To this end, we should build on the existing strong and renewed partnerships to effectively prevent, detect and respond to public health events in West Africa.”
He urged members of Board of Directors to come up with new, bold and innovative, achievable and practical ideas to guide and support countries investing in health security for the benefit of the people.
