The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Monday said it is set to commence daily testing of 200,000 samples across the country.
This was disclosed by the Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on Control of COVID-19.”We now have enough reagents to test close to 200,000 samples, across our network. We now really need to work with the State epidemiologists, to collect the samples,” he said.
He said the centre would now focus on response on the states and the set of professionals (epidemiologists) that work in every state that has had to take on a lot more responsibilities.
He said there are also the incident managers of the emergency operation centres and they are the heart of the collaboration in the states.”But also there are few opportunities coming their way to support the work that we’re doing, looking for resources, wherever possible to make their life easier.
“One thing that we must get out of this outbreak is really to build a network around them. So very often in the past, they have not really been recognized. But in effect to do that work effectively, they need the resources. So they’re the first people we call when we hear there’s a case of X or Y or there is a cluster of an unknown illness or unknown deaths anywhere in the states “. These outbreak has brought their Public Health teams much closer together with the leadership of every state. So now most State Governors know their state epidemiologist very well. That relationship will grow over the next few years because we will not return to a country with the hellish security architecture that we had in the past.
We will need to build on what we have learned from this outbreak to design a great architecture for the future. And this means that we need to use technology, use our platforms and build a lot more closer relationship across the different tiers of government from the federal at the NCDC level to the state epidemiologist, in the teams and the disease surveillance and notification officers and in every local government area,” he said.
He said the NCDC is also working with the World Bank to design some high-impact interventions to build an agile, flexible workforce for health security in Nigeria that would be responsive.