After Nigeria recent experience with series of disease epidemics
including Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, Lassa fever, Cerebrospinal
Meningitis, CSM, among others in recent times, yet the country is ill
prepared for the next epidemic, says PreventEpidemics.org, a new
website that highlights gaps in epidemic preparedness and pinpoints
specific actions civil society organizations and concerned citizens
can take for better preparedness.
The website is the first to provide a single Ready Score for every
country based on their ability to find, stop and prevent epidemics,
also provides advocacy tools to help make health protection a
priority.
Ready Score is essentially the measure of a country’s preparedness
based on existing data from the Joint External Evaluation, JEE, an
external assessment developed by the World Health Organization and
partner organizations to help countries find and close gaps in
epidemic preparedness.
With a scale of 0- 100, which represent a country preparedness and
response to epidemic, Nigeria is on a scale of 39 falling under the
category of countries that aren’t ready for any epidemic
Though Ready Score recognizes that no country will ever be completely
safe from the threat of epidemics, however, strong and robust systems
to find and stop threats can minimize preventable illness and death in
the event of new or emerging infectious diseases. Therefore Nigeria as
a country has a way to go in preparing and staying alert for disease
outbreak.
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