By Politico Staff Writer
The Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) through the National Public Health Agency (NPHA) and in collaboration with the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched the African Volunteer for Health Corps SURGE training with 72 participants.
The training which commenced on the 24th July, 2024 aims at strengthening the participants’ capacity for crisis preparedness and response in Sierra Leone and the African continent.
The WHO and Africa CDC flew in facilitators from Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Lesotho, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and within Sierra Leone to train the participants on diseases, vaccines, frontline operations and protracted conflict management, disasters/outbreaks, and humanitarian emergency skills.
The participants were taught how to work as a team in tackling emergencies, and subjected to simulation drills as a form of manifesting what they have been trained on and to experience how it looks like in real case scenario in the case of an outbreak.
Sierra Leone’s Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Charles Senessie in his statement at the event said the government of Sierra Leone wants to erect health facilities in every five kilometers within communities for easy accessibility, patient’s quality care, health workforce availability, and to also equip health infrastructure for timely response to pandemic or other outbreaks.
He registered the government’s commitment to the South-South Cooperation in order to foster disease prevention and preparedness for sudden outbreaks.
During the certification ceremony following the training, WHO’s AVoHC-SURGE consultant based in Congo Brazzaville, Professor Adebola Olayinka, said: “Sierra Leone is the 20th country in the continent to have completed this training with a turnover of 72 Sierra Leoneans-including 25 women-who successfully completed the training and earned certificates as AVoHC-SURGE Responders.”
She asserted that Africa CDC and WHO are targeting 3000 (three thousand) responders in the African continent to serve as standby emergency responders and as African Volunteer Health Corps in Responding to emergencies in the region and across the globe.
The Deputy Director-General of the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), John Vandy Rogers, explained that the training is a hallmark of the threshold in terms of making sure the processes and procedures are in place in order to fight outbreaks in the country.
He said: “this is a training in which the government of Sierra Leone through NPHA, Africa CDC and WHO had actually taken the country to a path wherein institutions and officials speak with one voice and act together as one; taking into consideration the processes and procedures that we look at in terms of fighting public health emergencies. This training is not only meant to benefit Sierra Leone but it is equivalently meant to benefit Africa and other regions in the globe.”
He encouraged the participants to leverage on this training and not to see themselves as been trained to satisfy the interest of Sierra Leone, but to satisfy humanity as outbreaks can occur anywhere around the worlds.
On the selection of participants, the Executive Director of the NPHA, Dr. Mustapha Jalloh said it was done with multi-sectorial selection of committee members from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Africa CDC and WHO to man the process. He added that the criteria for the selection of participants was adopted from the WHO’s generic criteria and the interview process done in two phases: virtual and in-person as participants were asked to bring along all their vital certificates to be verified by the committee members.
He pointed out that the participants’ disciplines varies from Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) specialists, Communication experts, to Laboratory technicians.
In his statement, the National Coordinator of CDC in Sierra Leone, Dr. Clement Ma’am, thanked the WHO for collaborating with Africa CDC, the MoH and the GoSL for creating that enabling environment. He praised the participants for making themselves available, and warned them to be ready for deployment in any part of the continent in the event of a public health emergency.
He urged the participants to apply what they had learnt. Awarding of certificates to the participants formed a key highlight of the event.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (12/08/24)
