Tanzania trains high caliber emergency responders

A TOTAL of 150 health professionals in Tanzania begin a month-long training today that will qualify them for African Health Volunteers Corps (AVoHC), emergency responders with desired qualities ready to detect and respond to emergencies.

This will be contributing to the more than 3000 African Health Volunteers Corps AVoHC that the World Health Organisation in the African region commissions as part of the Strengthening and Utilising Response Groups for Emergencies (SURGE) flagship.

On top of gaining skills in emergency response, they will be equipped and ready to go on short deployment notice.

“This training is mandatory for onboarding these health experts as part of 3000 operatives of the SURGE flagship,” said Dr Grace Saguti, Emergency Preparedness and Response Leader at WHO Tanzania.

This is the first SURGE group of the three flagship initiatives dedicated to health emergency preparedness and response, designed to equip countries and plan for health emergencies Preparedness and response.

With the increase of severity and frequency of health emergencies across Africa, WHO has initiated reform the current crisis response architecture.

The reforms translate lessons learnt from the pandemic into African driven solutions that reflect regional, national, and local needs. The reforms bred three components (also called flagships) to improve the capacity of all member states to prepare (PROSE), detect, (TASS) and respond (SURGE) to public health emergencies.

Africa experiences at least 100 health emergencies annually, ranging from disease outbreaks to natural or human-made disasters. In the process of responding to these crises lessons have been learnt and progress has been made.

In the past three years Tanzania has prepared and/or responded to Ebola, Covid-19, Cholera, Dengue, Leptospirosis and Anthrax.

The AVoHC-SURGE members will cascade their knowledge and skills downward and ready to deploy in shortest time possible to respond to emergencies in Tanzania and across Africa.

“The increase in the frequency of emergencies prompted WHO to develop this initiative. We are glad that Tanzania has taken in positively and we have already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health,” said Dr Zabulon Yoti, Acting Country Representative to WHO in Tanzania.

Prior to this training WHO worked with the government and partners in Tanzania to develop and validated its roadmap for implementing the Flagship initiative after the introduction of the Flagship initiative through a joint AFRO and WCO scoping mission.

During the mission, WHO handed over 8 vehicles to the Ministry of Health to facilitate in-country teams of highly skilled, resourced, and well-coordinated professionals arrive at a location of disasters or disease outbreaks within the shortest time possible (within 72 hours) and coordinate a rapid response to minimise their impact.

Although significant progress has been made in responding to health emergencies, with the average response time decreasing from 131 days in 2017 to 45 in 2019, protracted and emerging conflicts are driving humanitarian crises in 13 countries in the African region, with Sahel countries being the worst affected.

The flagship projects will build upon existing infrastructure to put in place a well-organised partner support system that augments national capacity when needed, incorporating lessons learned from Covid-19, Ebola and other health emergencies.