Health minister seeks stronger public health capabilities to combat pandemics

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Mohammad Ali Pate, has stressed the need to strengthen the country’s public health capabilities to be able to respond and ensure that outbreaks are stopped before they become epidemics or pandemics.

Speaking at the launch of the book, “An Imperfect Storm,” co-authored by the former Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekwazu, and his wife, Vivian Ihekweazu, yesterday, in Abuja, the minister noted that the world has been witnessing pandemics from time immemorial, adding that pandemics have always resulted in the transformation of societies.

He said: “Pandemics are here, and this is the era of the political crisis. Traditionally, pandemics have always, almost always, resulted in the transformation of societies. Right from the time immemorial, right from the ancient Greek periods, pandemics resulted in major transformations. The Greeks suffered from it. The Romans suffered from it. The plague, thousands of years ago, resulted in transformations. We had one in the 80s, HIV, and it resulted in some transformation. Now we have experienced COVID, and it is transforming the world. It’s a one-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, and the transformation is already underway.

Pate observed that we are emerging into a world of greater economic upheavals, and also acceleration of new pathogens, which may lead to another encounter, noting that the next crisis could be anywhere for what we see.

“In the late 90s, we had Nipah. Then there was SARS in 2003. Then there was the pandemic flu of 2009, there was Middle East Respiratory Virus in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2017, and in 2019 we have COVID.

The minister observed that an institution like the NCDC is going to be one of the significant hallmarks in Nigeria’s effort to respond when the next storm shows up.

In his remarks, Chikwe Ihekweazu noted that the country’s effective response to the Covid-19 pandemic was achieved through collaboration between national, sub-national entities, partners and the private sector.

He noted that the NCDC deployed an effective communication strategy to counter misinformation that came with the pandemic and restored public confidence.

Ihekweazu said, ” In reflecting on how we emerge from this, I think the challenge for us, whether we have a good response or a bad response, is not to think we have anything to worry about. It’s to continue. We have started and documented progress. But our collective challenge is to make sure that when the next one comes, and it will come, we respond effectively and timely”.

“So communication was very, very, very important. We all were united in that. We built trust. So we, as an organization, were able to respond to this crisis by addressing the misinformation, we were inspirational. I remember those days. The feeling of the response. My mother would send me WhatsApp messages, i have heard this, is it true? And those rumors were coming through so quickly. And so it became very clear that if we did not have all the channels, you know, people like my mother, she would just send a message to her children and because, you know, my friends and children, for example, would get that same message and it’s very frightening. But ultimately, our role as an organization is to support the positive communication”.

Also speaking, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative, Dr Walter Mulombo who applauded Nigeria’s effective response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its strict adherence to the protocol, said that the book illustrated the power of collaboration between renowned public health experts and renowned journalists practicing responsible journalism to save lives.

And this is what I have seen in this book, the partnership. We become professional and responsible journalists if we establish a good partnership. But it’s also a story of serious intervening uncertainty. I was appointed to come to Nigeria before the pandemic. When I received the green light to move to the beginning of the pandemic, when everybody was sick, and when we received the boom, you can imagine my pride and my spirit. I was being sent to a war where I was going to lose my life. That was the sentiment I had when I was joining. But when I landed in Nigeria, I was impressed by the COVID-19 lockdown. I was in a hotel. And I’ve seen something I’ve never seen before. I spent one month from one country to the other on quarantine. You are sent to a new country. You stay two weeks in quarantine.
That’s how I landed in Nigeria. I travelled years short. My fears were erased and today, I have a feeling of somebody whose life was saved by Nigeria”.

On his part, former Minister of State for Health, Dr Olorunnimbe Mamora said that the COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing in disguise to Nigeria considering that it has helped to country to strengthen its diagnostic capacity by drastically increasing its molecular laboratories and Intensive Care Units.

He said, “We know the number of molecular laboratories we have before COVID, we know how many we have now, we know the number of ICUs units, we know the number of regions that touch you all. I want to thank all those who are involved.

Mamora commended Dr Chikwe for his professionalism and the well-coordinated COVID-19 response.

The Director General of the NCDC, Dr Jide Idris applauded Chikwe for building a fantastic institution and pledged to build on the achievements recorded by his predecessor.