WAHO Calls For Partnership On Response To Public Health Threats

To achieve health security, the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) has called for renewed partnership to effectively prevent, detect and respond to public health events in the West African region.

The director-general of WAHO, Dr Melchior Athanase, made the call at a meeting of the Board of Directors of the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control (RCSDC), in Abuja.

He said in recent years, an average of 40 new outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases such as Ebola, Marburg, COVID-19, Monkeypox have been recorded in ECOWAS.

This, Athanase said, highlights the need to continue to strengthen the capacity of the CRSCM to achieve its objective, which is to strengthen capacities for surveillance, disease prevention, response and resilience to epidemics and other health emergencies in the ECOWAS region.

He said, “If irreversible progress has been made in the context of health security in the ECOWAS region, 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.

“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, therefore, urged the 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 all Africans.