Empower communities to respond to health emergencies — WHO
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Country Representative to Ghana, Professor Francis Chisaka Kasolo, has stressed the need for capacities and resources to be put in place at the community level for early detection and containment of health emergencies.
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Stressing the point that most health emergencies began and ended in communities, he pointed out that there had been many stories of how the lack of involvement of communities in health in general, and emergencies cases, had led to significant loss of lives.
"I recall events in the early days of Ebola in West Africa, when first cases were reported.
The community was aware of the epidemic three months before it was officially reported by the WHO.
Unfortunately, many lives were lost due to this gap. Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic have also amplified the critical role of community members in prevention, preparedness, readiness and response to any type of emergency, regardless of the hazard," he said.
Prof. Kasolo said this in Accra last Tuesday at a three-day tabletop exercise on community readiness for public health emergencies organised by the WHO in collaboration with the United Kingdom (UK) Health Security Agency, the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
Tabletop exercise
The community readiness tabletop exercise focuses on strengthening operational readiness of communities to detect, notify and respond to public health threats.
It also provides a unique opportunity to identify strengths, gaps and priorities for community readiness, and to begin the process to address areas of improvement.
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Three communities from two districts of the Eastern Region have been targeted for the exercise.
Ghana is the first country globally to conduct this exercise, and the choice, according to Prof. Kasolo, was because Ghana prided itself in trying out new things.
He said after the exercise with the three communities, the information gathered would be used to build a programme that would incorporate communities across the country.
Ghana’s response to health emergencies
Speaking on behalf of the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director, Public Health Division of the GHS, Dr Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, said over the past two years, Ghana experienced a number of outbreaks, including lassa fever, yellow fever and marburg virus disease in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Asiedu-Bekoe said despite the fact that Ghana had made notable progress in reducing the lead time to detect and control public health emergencies, there remained inadequacies in surveillance systems, response planning, workforce adequacies and competencies, agility in response teams and challenges with stockpiling supplies.
Partnering with affected communities before and during an emergency, he said, could leverage those strengths to better protect lives and livelihoods during a health emergency.
“This community readiness tabletop exercise underscores our recognition of the community as proactive contributors to the collective resilience of public health systems and national health security,” Dr Asiedu-Bekoe said.
Dr Claire Bayntun of the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team said the outcomes of the exercise would be relevant to other communities and countries in responding to public health emergencies.