RAHI Medical Outreach represented by the Program/M&E Officer, Nwakwuo Geoffrey Chima, participated in the Joint NCDC-Chatham House workshop on “Indicator Prioritisation Exercise for Monitoring and Evaluation of Health Systems Resilience and Trade and Travel Restrictions” on February 25 2019, at Transcorp Hilton. Abuja.

The workshop is part of a Project led by the CGHS on Strengthening National Accountability and Preparedness for Global Health Security (SNAP-GHS), which overall aims to identify the enablers and barriers to enhanced data use by National Public Health Institutes.

The NCDC has chosen to focus efforts on improving the monitoring of two key areas (Health Systems Resilience and Trade & Travel Restrictions). Thus, the need to convene the workshop to review and prioritise indicators that have been identified from datasets and monitoring frameworks that exist in Nigeria. These indicators are believed to be essential to strengthening public health preparedness and global health security in Nigeria.

The workshop started with a welcome address by Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, National Coordinator/ Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, NCDC, Nigeria’s National Public Health Institute. There was also a presentation by Dr Emmanuel Agogo of NCDC and a brief Overview of the workshop’s objectives and activities by Dr Ngozi Erondu of the Chatham House.

It was then followed by indicator-prioritisation exercise by grounds, feedback and consensus plenary and a roundtable discussion to agree on core indicators to inform a piloted toolkit for IANPHI-led assessment of areas to support individual National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) to better use existing data for preparedness.

The workshop is expected to summarize identified areas of support needed by Ethiopia, Nigeria and Pakistan NPHIS.