As schools resume after seven months of COVID-19 outbreak, the FCT is organising a two-day intra-action review workshop in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.
The Acting Secretary of the FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat (HHSS) Dr. Mohammed Kawu, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja on Sunday, said the intra-action review is critical at this point to enable relevant stakeholders to collectively review the current response approach so as to identify challenges, adopt best practices and re-strategize for improved response.
According to him, the review meeting which is expected to hold between October 13 and 14, 2020, “will also help to document lessons learned, share experiences and utilize available evidence to plan for future outbreaks”.
“One of the key (areas of) focus of the workshop will be to build consensus amongst relevant stakeholders with specific target on full decentralization of the response to the Area Councils”.
He said: “Other key targets of the review meeting include improving community engagement and participation in the response, sustaining safety measures in FCT schools, improving enforcement of preventive measures and integrating the distribution of palliatives with the response activities”.
It would be recalled that on the 20th of March 2020 the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), confirmed the first COVID-19 case. Following the confirmation, a multi-sectoral Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was activated to coordinate the outbreak response in collaboration with Partners.
Dr. Kawu pointed out that the response strategy is based on an Incident Management System (IMS) with thematic areas focusing on Surveillance and Epidemiology, Laboratory, Infection Prevention and Control, Health and Safety, Case management, Risk communication, Logistics, Coordination, and Research.
“An incident action plan (IAP) was developed to guide the response with an overarching goal of containing the spread of COVID-19 in the FCT”, he said.
