Six months after the first case, Dr. Chikwe ihekweazu, Director-General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control NCDCgov reflects on our response to the pandemic.
When I walked out of the office and headed home at 10.30pm earlier this week, I left behind a few members of the NCDC team, still working on their computers. Some had only just resumed for the night shift. The test results for the day were still being compiled and confirmed with states. Since the onset of this pandemic, a typical day for me begins with phone calls as early as 6am and ends with meetings as late as 9pm. Our young agency has transformed to having staff working 24-7.
While it is often said that Nigerians are more reactive than proactive, yet, Nigeria was one of the first countries to recognise the risk posed by COVID-19. We started planning the response for COVID-19, very early, albeit with limited resources. A multi-sectoral National Coronavirus Preparedness Group was established by NCDC on the 7th of January 2020.
Our human resources at NCDC and across the country has proven to be one of our greatest assets. In the last decade, Nigeria has faced several public health challenges. In 2014, Nigeria responded with relative success to an Ebola outbreak that affected four other West African countries. In 2017, we recorded the first cases of monkeypox, forty years after the last case was reported in the country and we have continued to learn from this.
It is easy to think of Nigeria as a country with uniform access to resources, forgetting the varying capacities and responsibilities across our states. The 36 states in Nigeria are at varying phases of this outbreak. There is established community transmission in some states, while other states are only at the beginning of this COVID-19 outbreak. This means that the intensity of the response will differ by state. We have deployed Rapid Response Teams to all states in Nigeria.
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