Kenya, WHO launch hub to respond to Africa's health emergency
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The World Health Organization, partnered with Kenya on Saturday to launch the Health Emergency Hub in order to enhance response to health emergencies in Africa.
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WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Kenyan government launched Saturday a medical emergency hub in Nairobi, the first in a chain of African centers aimed to change the way the continent responds to emergencies.
Kenya will be the regional hub for medical equipment, which will help neighboring countries have faster access to required medicines.
The hub will include a training center that includes stockpiles of medical equipment and a cadre of 3000 elite responders able to deal with medical emergencies within their first 24 hours.
The WHO says the team of experts includes epidemiologists, laboratory experts, data managers, field logisticians, anthropologists, and mental health and psychosocial experts from across the region. The emergency experts team will receive training and be able to respond to any emergency in every African country.
"We see the continent expressing in very practical terms its determination to be better prepared for the next pandemic… this is going to be our contribution to helping countries build their capacity to be much better prepared and better able to respond,” WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti told Reuters.
The WHO did not specify when the hub would be fully operational but it will start helping countries identify and train national emergency experts immediately, according to Moeti.
Over 100 health emergencies are witnessed every year in Africa, more than in any other region in the world, as per the WHO.
The global health body is currently monitoring events such as measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo, potential cases of the highly infectious Marburg virus in Ghana, and cholera in Cameroon - in addition to Covid-19 and monkeypox cases throughout the continent.
While the deepening drought and food insecurity in the region lead to over 80 million people in the eastern African region being food insecure and causing a rise in malnutrition, Moeti said that "All of this needs very solid preparations so that when things happen that are going to trigger an increase in vulnerability to disease and illness, the national systems are ready to manage that."
