Nigeria, 3 Other African Countries Not Ready For Epidemic Control

Nigeria has been listed among countries with the lowest readiness for epidemic control in Africa. These are countries that have significant gaps in finding, stopping and preventing health threats to its citizens.

According to Prevent Epidemics, Nigeria conducted a transparent evaluation to ascertain its readiness to tackle epidemics on June 11, 2017, and the results showed a 39% ready score.

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Other countries in this category are Cameroon(38%),Mauritania(38%), Mali(35%),Guinea (35%),Benin(34%) and South Sudan(30%).

Areas of assessment for the report include: emergency response operations, linking public health and security authorities, medical countermeasures and personnel deployment, real-time surveillance, national laboratory system, National Legislation, Policy, and Financing.

Nigeria has recently experienced outbreaks of Lassa fever a viral hemorrhagic fever caused by rats alongside cholera outbreak in north-eastern Nigeria which claimed over 100 lives.

The assessment, however, revealed that Nigeria is committed to improving epidemic preparedness, but an outbreak today could cause numerous deaths and spread to neighboring countries and the world.

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It further stated that a National action plan to address critical gaps in epidemic preparedness was completed on July 23, 2018, and a financing proposal to fund the epidemic preparedness plan would be due October 21, 2018.

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