Expert drums support for community emergency plans
By Oluwakemi Oladipo/Omowunmi Alake
Emergencies
Lagos, July 4, 2018 (NAN) A public health physician, Prof. Adebayo Onajole, on Wednesday urged governments and health organisations to encourage and support community based risk reduction and emergency preparedness in the country.
Onajole made the call on the sideline of a workshop on Medical Emergencies organised by the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Chapter and the College of Medicine, LUTH, Idi-Araba, Lagos.
The theme of the workshop is: “Preparedness and Response to Public Health Emergencies: The Challenge of Emerging and Neglected Tropical Diseases”.
Onajole, who is also a professor of Community Medicine and Public Health, Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, said that supporting the approach would help to manage all types of emergencies efficiently.
“Preparedness is based on lessons learned from both actual and simulated response situations.
“Effective response is all but impossible without extensive planning and thoughtful preparation.
“For every state to achieve public health preparedness, community education and participation must be involved.
“The World Health Organisation (WHO) classified Nigeria and other countries in the African region to be at moderate risk of spread of infectious diseases.
“This is why training comes in as the most important process to preparedness cycle, because lack of training human personnel will affect healthcare delivery,’’ the don said.
He said: “For training to be effective, there must be constant funds; we need to have good political commitment to support training as a continuous process.
“Training improves communications strategies and feedback from federal level to local level; it is the only way we can succeed in achieving emergencies preparedness.’’
Onajole said that preparedness also helped to reduce disaster and mortality.
According to the expert, emergencies will occur but how we handle the emergency matters a lot.
“We have reoccurring medical emergencies in some certain states in the country including Lagos State, of which they are doing their best to control any outbreak.
“Some states in the country need to imbibe preparedness and response to health emergencies,’’ he said.
Onajole said there were public health approaches to emerging infectious diseases including surveillance, epidemiology for early diagnosis, early response to outbreaks and changing diseases patterns.
“Others include public health laboratory support for rapid and accurate diagnosis, rapid communication links to private providers and hospitals, communication and education about prevention to public.
“Both the Federal and State’s ministries of health must approach all health institutions to identify problems and provide solutions,” he said. (NAN)
AOI/OKG/VIV/MST
Editing by Vivian Ihechu/Muhammad Suleiman Tola