The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Federal Ministry of Health have started the process to strengthen community resilience against epidemics in the country.
Director General of NEMA, Muhammad Sani Sidi, said the move has become critical in view of discovery that epidemics and diseases are leading causes of deaths in Nigeria.
He said; “Compiled data of top 10 natural disasters in Nigeria by Emergency Management Data Base, (EM-DAT) sorted by number of people killed, indicated that the 10 were exclusively epidemic.
“In realizing the inevitability of pandemic and the attendant grave consequences, we sought for the support of the United States of America (Africom) to develop the Nigeria National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan, Armed Forces of Nigeria Pandemic Contingency Plan and the Military Assistance to Civil Authorities (MACA).”
According to him, the epidemic support plans obtained with the assistance of the American authorities were unveiled and submitted to the Health Ministry in 2013 were capable of galvanizing all relevant organs and the society against the outbreak of any epidemic.
He said about eight months after the unveiling, there was outbreak of Ebola which “Nigeria achieved high degree of success in containing the pandemic partly because we did not start at a zero level. We knew it was a possibility, we have a plan that recognized the need for the society’s wide preparedness and action and that was exactly what we did.”
