Experts harp on quality health data for disease outbreaks

Some stakeholders in the health sector have said sustained access to high-quality health data is crucial for effective control and management of HIV, COVID-19 and other  pandemics and disease outbreaks.

They made the call yesterday in Abuja during the close out ceremony of the USAID funded Data.FI COVID-19 Impact Mitigation Project.

The project  supported COVID-19 response  in Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Cross River, Edo, Kano, Niger, Oyo States, and the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT).

Senior Regional Manager, West & Francaphone Africa, Data.FI, Dr. Dauda Sulaiman Dauda, said  the project leverages the transformative potential of digital health and analytics to enhance health outcomes across various critical programs, including HIV, Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), COVID-19, and disease surveillance within the Global Health Security/One Health Agenda.

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He said with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, USAID funded the Data.FI project in April 2020 to provide time-limited support to the COVID-19 response in Nigeria.

He further said that in the second phase of the support, Data.FI provided technical support for data review processes in the eight focus states.

He called on all stakeholders to continue leveraging the systems and processes the project has established, adding “ Let us maintain the momentum and ensure that the gains we have made are sustained and built upon.”

The Chief Consultant Epidemiologist at the federal ministry of health and social welfare, Dr Ganyu Jamiu, called for the sustainability of the integrated emergency operations centers (EOCs) and other measures established to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the project helped in strengthening EOCs in the country, adding that unlike the public health EOCs, which targeted only emergency infectious disease outbreaks, the integrated EOCs  went beyond emergencies and included diseases like hypertension, diabetes among others.

He called for more funding and resources to scale up the project.

Head, Epidemiology Division , Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said there was need to sustain lessons learnt from the project , adding that it helped  support  effective coordination.