SEYCHELLES — The Seychelles Ministry of Health is currently hosting the third edition of the training of trainers’ workshop on Public Health Emergency Operations Centres (PHEOCS).
the Seychelles government is hosting this critical training of trainers’ workshop in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).
Other development partners, such as the Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC), US Centre for Disease Control (US CDC), the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), the United Kingdom Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) are also involved.
The objective of this training is to equip trainers with the necessary skills to strengthen their home countries’ PHEOCS and train others at a subnational level in incident and PHEOCS management.
The trained trainers will be expected to add to the pool of human resources in the continent on public health emergency management.
A total of 42 attendees drawn from 27 countries and regional bodies from Africa are participating in the training.
The workshop endeavors to train the trainers on the management of high-risk public health emergencies from disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and man-made calamities. T
his PHEOC’S training of trainers’ workshop will build on the COVID-19 response experiences of countries in the region and in Seychelles.
They will also be taken through how to conduct simulations and run through to test the competency of systems established and after-action reviews.
The Minister of Health, Mrs. Peggy Vidot, opened the workshop and urged participants to use this meeting to come up with concrete actions for further strengthening PHEOC, most of which were established to help in coordinating the COVID-19 response and follow-on health emergencies.
African region countries continue to have a disproportionately high risk of public health emergencies from disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and man-made calamities.
In addition to COVID-19, the region has recently had outbreaks of Ebola, Cholera, Marburg virus disease, and mPox, natural disasters of flooding, cyclones, and man-made calamities from armed conflicts among others.
All these continue to underscore the need to maintain public health emergency operations centers (PHEOCs) that serve as hubs for coordinating responses to public health emergencies.
PHEOCs bring together multi-sector and multidisciplinary experts to coordinate emergency management efforts in a structured manner using the incident management system (IMS).
The functionality of Public Health Emergency Operations Centres (PHEOCs) in countries is vital to their response capacity.
In 2012, to promote best practices and support PHEOC capacity building, the WHO Department of Global Capacities, Alert, and Response (GCR) established the PHEOC Network, namely EOC-NET.
According to WHO’s strategic framework for emergency preparedness in 2022, PHEOCS follows general emergency management principles with a wide range of risk assessment, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Cameroon began developing a PHEOC in 2014, and the nation’s MOH prioritized its establishment to improve outbreak coordination, management, and response.
Cameroon’s PHEOC conducted several pieces of training for MOH personnel, including training on the Incident Management System, participation in the CDC’s Public Health Emergency Management Fellowship training program, and the execution of several tabletop exercises and simulations.
The PHEOC was activated in May 2016 in response to an avian influenza virus A(H5N1) outbreak on a poultry farm in Yaoundé.
Its activation enabled the early detection of human cases, rapid response to interrupt human transmission, and oversee case management.
By the time the PHEOC was deactivated in June 2016, none of the human contacts tested positive.
For all the latest healthcare industry news from Africa and the World, subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, and YouTube Channel, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and like us on Facebook.
