By Kemo Cham
Sierra Leone is set to attain another milestone in global health security by becoming the second country in the WHO Africa Region to conduct an Intra-Action Review (IAR) on the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The review, which is slated to take place on September 22nd and 23rd, is a stocktaking process designed to evaluate the country’s response to the pandemic to enable it make improvements.
The IAR is a routine country-led exercise recommended by the WHO and it is conducted during emergencies in-country. It is designed to identify practical areas for immediate remediation and sustained improvement of the response. It brings together representatives of responders with knowledge of the public health response pillars under review.
The global health agency developed the guideline for the IAR on Covid-19 in July, as the global pandemic intensified.
Dr Charles Njuguna, Health Security and Emergency Coordinator at the WHO Country Office, is coordinating the review process in Sierra Leone. He told Politico that the process is crucial for the country to provide effective response to end the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Usually, for most of the emergencies, we do an after action review, because they don’t stay for so long. But this is a pandemic that is with us now for several months and it’s likely to continue. That’s why we don’t want to wait until the end. We want to do a review at this time so that we can improve on our response,” Dr Njuguna said in an interview on Friday, the last of a two-day planning and orientation session for the review.
Over 40 officials drawn from various pillars within the Ministry of Health and the National Covid-19 Emergency Response Center (NACOVERC) took part in the planning process that was held at the WHO Country Office in Freetown.
Dr Njugna said the process will review how the coordination has been done, the performance of the technical pillars involved, how surveillance has been progressing, the laboratory capacity of the country, as well as case management. He added that they will also assess infection prevention mechanism in place and risk communication.
“It’s a host of several pillars that we are going to review on what has been done. And this review will climax on 22nd and 23rd with a national workshop, where we will have representatives from the districts who will be coming to meet with the national team to be able to finalize it and after that there will be a report that will be shared with the government,” he said.
Sierra Leone becomes the second country in Africa, after South Africa, to conduct the review. And this, according to Dr Njuguna, means a lot as many other countries are poised to learn from the West African country.
“Sierra Leone is one country that keeps on leading processes in the African region. And it’s not just this process. I want to acknowledge [that] for this intra action review, we are the second country. The only country that conducted this process is South Africa and they did it just last week. So we are the second country and even globally we are among the top countries that are doing this and I think this is a great milestone for this country,” he said.
He added: “There are many other processes that Sierra Leone has led. When we set the electronic surveillance system at the health facilities, Sierra Leone was the first country in the whole of the African continent to do that. When we were putting together the national action plan for health security, Sierra Leone was the first country to have the president of the Republic to launch that important document in the whole continent. So there are many processes that Sierra Leone has been leading and countries are learning from Sierra Leone.”
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