Better Response To Disasters: Stakeholders Brainstorm

Discussions are underway to draw up the 2021-2024 Multirisk plan for the preparation and response to public health emergencies.

This is the crux of a multisectorial workshop that is set to round off in Ebolowa tomorrow. Presided over by the Director of Disease Control at the Ministry of Public Heath, Dr Alain Georges Etoundi Mballa, the workshop is bringing together participants from various stakeholders administrations; about a dozen ministries as well as governmental and non-governmental organisations. The aim is to ensure the plan is ready by September 2021.

Opening the workshop last Monday, June 21, Dr Alain Georges Etoundi Mballa remarked that the plan will constitute in the near future, the compass which will guide all the interventions of the Ministry of Public Health in the fields of preparation and response to public health emergencies in Cameroon over the three-year period indicated.

He added that the development of such a document finds its justification in the current punctual and sparse management of the various epidemics that our country regularly faces as well as the COVID-19 pandemic which has threatened all sectors of social life.

In view of the consequences that this entails, it is therefore appropriate to set up a global tool for managing the occurrence of health events as well as disasters that simultaneously responds to situations (health emergencies and disasters) that occur in the Cameroonian context, Dr Etoundi Mballa noted.

This is the reason why, in closing his remarks, the chairman of the session invited the participants to keep in mind the operational nature of this multi-risk plan which must then be concrete and glued to the socio-economic reality of Cameroon for more efficiency.