The East African Community table-top simulation exercise (TTX) successfully tested the activation of the recently established regional rapidly deployable expert pool on Thursday June 20th in Nairobi, Kenya.
The expert pool was set up since 2020 based on the lessons learnt from the Ebola outbreak in 2014/15 in West Africa as well as other infectious disease outbreaks in the EAC COVID -19 to ensure a timely regional response to disease outbreaks working with regional experts.
The simulation exercise was part of a 3-day workshop that was opened by a joint training of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO).
“A collaboration framework is under development that will allow us to join forces in outbreak response through joint rostering of experts, capacity building and deployments inside the EAC and on the continent,” said Dr Radjabu Bigirimana, AVoHC Lead at the Africa CDC.
The objective of TTX was to identify strengths and areas of improvement for collaboration and coordination between national, regional and continental level in an outbreak scenario and to develop a roadmap, including recommendations on how to integrate the EAC rapidly deployable expert pool and the AVoHC-SURGE initiative to allow for joint planning, deployments and capacity development.
A TTX is a facilitated discussion under a low stress environment where participants meet to discuss their roles during an emergency and to practice, evaluate and identify areas for improvement in their responses to a particular scenario.
The training aimed at strengthening capacities and knowledge among Partner States’ and EAC experts in relation to regional and continental guidelines and mechanisms in place for rapid response, centering around the African Health Volunteers Corps and Strengthening and Utilizing Response Groups for Emergencies (AVoHC-SURGE) initiative, implemented across the continent.
The training and the TTX, brought together more than 50 experts from health, environment and livestock sectors in charge of emergency preparedness and response in the EAC Partner States as well as the EAC Secretariat, WHO AFRO, Africa CDC, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the German Epidemic Preparedness Team (SEEG) who together simulated a response to a cross-border Ebola Virus outbreak in the EAC region.
