The West African Network For Infectious Diseases Surveillance (WANIDS) Launched In Accra

The outbreak and resurgence of epidemic diseases in the West African Region are the consequences of a weak health system and fragile mechanisms for disease surveillance and prevention. In addition, there is inadequate infrastructure, limited skilled human resources and capacity of laboratory services. Given this background, the 47th Conference of the Heads of State of Economic Organisation of West African States (ECOWAS) has mandated the West African Health Organization (WAHO) to establish a regional structure for epidemic prevention and control body called “ECOWAS’ Regional Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control (ECOWAS-RCDSC)”. The ECOWAS-RCDSC components include surveillance and early warning, laboratory capacity building, work force, training and research.

In order to ensure greater co-operation among ECOWAS member countries, (WAHO) and Connecting Organization for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) are hosting a three days workshop on the Integrated Regional Platform for Collection and Sharing of Health Information and to Build the Capacity of ECOWAS member countries, from the 1st to the 3rd of March 2017 at the Movenpick Hotel, Accra.

The highlight of this event will be the formal launch of the West African Network for Infectious Diseases Surveillance (WANIDS) on Friday 3rd March 2017. The West African Network for Infectious Disease Surveillance (WANIDS), an initiative of WAHO is a network of the 15 ECOWAS countries with a mission to foster cooperation between the countries to enable early detection and control of infectious diseases. WANIDS will operate within the newly ECOWAS-RCDSC. Its development has been achieved in partnership between WAHO and CORDS through a special support of the Rockefeller Foundation and Skoll Global Threats Fund.

The event which is expected to bring together ECOWAS country stakeholders, WAHO, CORDS and others international partners including the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank, Chatham House, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Rockefeller Foundation. The workshop aims to strengthen the ability for member countries of ECOWAS to work together towards building their capacity in health information collection and sharing for early infectious disease detection, response and control in order to mitigate the impact of public health emergencies on populations.

WAHO with the support of its international partners, is committed to building effective cooperation between West African states to enable early detection and control of infectious disease-related threats. This implies a multi-sectorial “One Health“ approach (human, animal and environmental health), in compliance with WHO International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) by enabling knowledge sharing on key issues and challenges that can mitigate against the effective implementation of regional effort to stem epidemics in the region. To mark the opening of the forum, a high level ceremony will be addressed by The World Bank representative (Mr. John-Paul Clark), the Executive Director of CORDS (Dr Christophe Longuet), the representative of Skoll Global Threats Fund (Dr Jennifer Olsen), the representative of Chatham House (Dr David Harper), the Deputy Director General of WAHO (Dr. Laurent Assogba) and Ghana’s Minister of Health, Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu who is expected to formally open the workshop. Dr Laurent Assogba, Deputy Director of WAHO, on behalf of the President of ECOWAS and the General Director of WAHO, said “we are excited to be convening this workshop for international public health experts, institutional partners and key stakeholders to share ideas, expertise and best practices while working on developing common initiatives to ensure West African countries are in a better position to deal with major disease outbreaks such as Ebola as and when they occur”.