The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission has tasked Nigeria with strengthening the quality, timeliness and reliability of drug-use data to enable the country and the region to respond more effectively to emerging trends in substance use.

The Commission gave the charge yesterday in Lagos at a three-day capacity-building workshop for the Nigeria Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (NENDU), organised in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (FMoH&SW) to strengthen the country’s drug-use surveillance system.

The three-day workshop brought together 35 healthcare personnel and NENDU focal points from Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones for training in drug-use data collection, validation, analysis and reporting.

Speaking at the opening, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Human Development and Social Affairs, Prof. Fatou Sow Sarr, who was represented by the Head of the ECOWAS Drug Prevention and Control Division, Dr Daniel Amankwaah, said the evolving and complex nature of substance use required constant monitoring of emerging trends.

Amankwaah said countries needed systems capable of routinely monitoring the magnitude, patterns and trends of drug supply and demand, as well as national and regional responses to the drug situation.

He also stressed the need for health and law enforcement sectors to work together in a coordinated, public-health-focused manner, noting that national mechanisms should be able to assess drug-use situations and identify appropriate responses to both supply and demand.

According to him, reliable and up-to-date data were essential for guiding evidence-based policies and programmes, without which interventions could become reactive rather than proactive.

He explained that ECOWAS established the West African Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (WENDU) in 2013 as a regional mechanism for collecting, analysing and disseminating data on drug use and related issues across member states.

At the national level, he said, NENDU performs a similar function in Nigeria, with the data generated feeding into WENDU. He therefore urged participants to use the training to improve the expansion, timeliness, reliability and trustworthiness of data generated from their various centres.

Amankwaah said the ECOWAS Commission places a high premium on credible drug-use data because national information forms the basis of the regional WENDU report, which is also incorporated into global drug-use reporting.

He said the workshop was being conducted in phases and added that subsequent phases would target other professionals involved in the drug data collection process.