Nigeria has agreed to a new project with Germany to help prepare and respond to infectious diseases.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Germany’s public health body, the Robert Koch Institute, signed the joined declaration in Abuja for the NiCADE project.
NiCADE is the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control: Capacity Development for Preparedness and Response for Infectious Diseases.
NiCADE will involve a partnership holding up surveillance for hepatitis E, rotavirus and antimicrobial resistance.
The partnership will involve tertiary hospitals, coordinated by NCDC with support from RKI.
It comes less than two years after NCDC and RKI started a project that led to developing a national training manual for infection prevention and control.
Their collaboration has expanded to include intensified surveillance of endemic viral infections of public health concern, improve surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and infection, prevention and control.
Under NiCADE project, RKI (Germany’s version of NCDC) will provide technical expertise and advice to health practitioners as well as strengthen Nigeria’s capacity for international health regulations.
NCDC, in a statement, said the partnership was a “mutually-beneficial opportunity for national public health institutes to collaborate, towards global health security.”
“It greatly demonstrates the fact that countries are mutually dependent on each other, for health security,” the centre added.
