The United States government has funded the participation of four Nigerians to attend the advanced Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) Fellowship program at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
This was disclosed by U.S Consul General, Claire Pierengelo during the closing ceremony and certification of participants of the USG-supported Public Health Emergency Management Professional Certificate Program in Lagos.
According to her, the US government remain committed and stand ready to continue its partnership with Nigeria in its response to public health disease threats and adopt strategies that will increase disease prevention, detection.
What the U.S Consul General is saying
Pierengelo stated, “Over the last 14 days, our distinguished participants have gone through rigorous training leading to certification. The two-week course focused on core principles of an Incident Management System (IMS) as an efficient coordination mechanism for responding to small disease outbreaks as well as more significant public health emergencies like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Emergency Management is one of the 11 capacity building prioritized by the USG in its support of Nigeria. Our primary goal is to continue supporting Nigeria to achieve the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) 2024 targets and the International Health Regulations (IHR) requirements by strengthening workforce development, surveillance, emergency response, and laboratory capacity, among other areas.
“This highlights our continued strategic partnership with Nigeria to support health security and response to disease threats. In the recent past, the USG had funded the participation of 4 Nigerians to attend the advanced Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) Fellowship program at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
“As Nigeria consolidates country capacity for public health response by establishing State Public Health Emergency Operations Centers (PHEOC) across the country, we envision expanding PHEM capacity across Nigeria by training more stakeholders to ensure adequate knowledge, competencies, and skills to efficiently manage technical operations of the PHEOCs.”
She explained that even as governments continue to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need for all countries to continuously improve their response capacities.
“We believe the PHEM professional certification program is one such training initiative that will adequately position Nigeria for epidemic and pandemic response now and into the future. I thank Dr. Chikwe and the NCDC team for providing the opportunity for this transformative collaboration. In addition, I would like to thank the US-CDC for their leadership and Georgetown University for their efforts in working with the government and other partners to implement the PHEM program in Nigeria,” she added.
