Capacity building at points of entry during COVID-19 pandemic: harmonising training curriculum for Economic Community of West African States.

This paper describes the process for developing, validating and disseminating through a train-the-trainer (TOT) event a standardised curriculum for public health capacity building for points of entry (POE) staff across the 15-member state Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that reflects both international standards and national guidelines.A five-phase process was used in developing the curriculum: phase (1) assessment of existing materials developed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Africa CDC and the West African Economic and Monetary Union, (2) design of retained and new, harmonised content, (3) validation by the national leadership to produce final content, (4) implementation of the harmonised curriculum during a regional TOT, and (5) evaluation of the curriculum.Of the nine modules assessed in English and French, the technical team agreed to retain six harmonised modules providing materials for 10 days of intensive training. Following the TOT, most participants (n=28/30, 93.3%) indicated that the International Health Regulations and emergency management modules were relevant to their work and 96.7% (n=29/30) reported that the training should be cascaded to POE staff in their countries.The ECOWAS harmonised POE curriculum provides a set of training materials and expectations for national port health and POE staff to use across the region. This initiative contributes to reducing the effort required by countries to identify emergency preparedness and response capacity-building tools for border health systems in the Member States in a highly connected region.

COVID-19 in West Africa: regional resource mobilisation and allocation in the first year of the pandemic.

The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent's health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.

COVID-19 Pandemic Readiness Status of West Africa (preprint)

Background From the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in late December 2019, countries have been stepping up their pandemic preparedness and response activities in accordance with WHO recommendations. Informed by the recent lessons learned from the West Africa Ebola Virus Disease outbreak, and subsequent investments made in public health emergency preparedness and response in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region, the West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO) is providing regional leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic preparedness and response. We assessed the COVID-19 pandemic readiness status of West Africa.Methods We conducted survey of all 15 ECOWAS member states between February 27 and March 15, 2020. We purposively selected a minimum of two respondents from each of the 15 ECOWAS member states – interviewing 37 in all using an interviewer-administered questionnaire based on the nine item WHO national capacity review tool for novel corona virus (nCOV). We also reviewed reports of COVID-19 pandemic preparedness meetings and trainings organized by WAHO. We performed a thematic analysis on the data and described the strengths and weaknesses of the ongoing pandemic readiness efforts of West Africa.Results Overall, the strengths of pandemic readiness of the region were: capacity to test 86.7% (13/15) of member states; functional incident management systems (100%); rapid response teams 100%, and at least two of the three tiers of field epidemiology workforce (100%). Within the region also, there existed good cross-border collaborations among member states, active participation of health ministers of member states in regional coordination meetings and decision making. Member states described the numbers of qualified biomedical scientists/technicians, field epidemiologists, risk communicators, and COVID-19 case management teams as inadequate. None of the member states had stockpiles of COVID-19 test kits, laboratory supplies, and personal protective equipment.Conclusion ECOWAS member states are taking appropriate COVID-19 pandemic preparedness measures in all pillars towards a regional response. Rather than a total lack, there are insufficiencies in numbers of skilled workforce, logistics, and supplies. Governments of member states are supportive of the coordination and technical direction of WAHO and WHO.