The NCDC And NAPHS

Jeremiah Aluwong

4 years ago

About the NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control is the Nigeria’s national public health institute with the mandate to lead the preparedness, detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies. The first formal step to establish the NCDC took place in 2011 when some departments in the Ministry of Health, including the Epidemiology Division, the Avian Influenza Project and its laboratories, and the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (NFELTP) were moved to form the nucleus of the agency. The Bill for an Act to establish NCDC was signed into law in November 2018, by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Read more about NCDC

The mission for the NCDC (2017-2021) is ‘To protect the health of Nigerians through evidence-based prevention, integrated disease surveillance and response activities, using a one health approach, guided by research and led by a skilled workforce’.

The core functions of NCDC

The core functions of NCDC include:

Prevent, detect, and control diseases of public health importance.
Coordinate surveillance systems to collect, analyse and interpret data on diseases of public health importance.
Support States in responding to small outbreaks, and lead the response to large disease outbreaks.
Develop and maintain a network of reference and specialized laboratories.
Conduct, collate, synthesize and disseminate public health research to inform policy.
Lead Nigeria’s engagement with the international community on diseases of public health relevance

Organisation of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control

The NCDC has 213 staff, working across its locations at the Headquarters and the National Reference Laboratory in Abuja, as well as the Central Public Health Laboratory in Lagos State which is a campus of the National Reference Laboratory.

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Led by a Director-General, the members of staff work in six Directorates, four of which are Technical Directorates. These include:

Public Health Laboratory Services
Prevention Programmes and Knowledge Management
Emergency Preparedness and Response
Surveillance and Epidemiology
Finance and Accounts
Administration and Human Resources

National Action Plan for Health Security Federal Republic of Nigeria (2018-2022).

The National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) is a comprehensive multi-sectoral plan that integrates multiple workplans including REDISSE, NCDC Strategy Plan, AMR Action Plan, and immunizations plans, addressing the major gaps identified by the Joint External Evaluation (2017) and Performance of Veterinary Services (2010) assessments and prioritizing them by national strategies and risks. As such, the NAPHS is an “overarching” plan and can be used to create linkages and monitor progress of major health security initiatives. The NAPHS is intended to provide: a) a clear roadmap for implementation over a 1‒2-year period, allowing for annual revisions to the plan based on capacities gained and activities implemented; and b) a menu of costed activities for future years, which can easily be incorporated into annual implementation plans and integrated into partner activities. As such, this document is complemented by internal products including individual workplans developed by the individual technical areas and an overarching NAPHS tracking platform that will be used for mutual accountability. Critical financing gaps remain; advocacy, resource mobilization, and coordination between relevant stakeholders will be critical to implement activities to keep Nigerians safe. Source: NCDC Featured Image Source: TOS TV Network

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