Federal Government has partnered with the German government on the surveillance and management of communicable diseases in Kano and Oyo States.
The project tagged “Surveillance and Outbreak Response Management System in Nigeria (SORMASN),” will be centred on surveillance on communicable disease such as, measles, cholera, avian influenza and Ebola virus.
The Deputy Director, Disease Surveillance and Monitoring, Federal Ministry of Health, Mr Sebastine Yennah who led the German expert to the Oyo State Ministry of Health said “What we intend to achieve is that every disease situation will be detected as quick as possible.
“Health expert has been trained and retrained and enabled with the necessary facilities, they will be able to detect any communicable disease on time and communicate to ?the health facility focal person or any health expert.
“We have what we call Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response Strategy (IDSRS), but the SORMASN project with the German Government will complement what we have on ground.
“We are reviewing issues related to measles, cholera, avian influenza and Ebola virus. Real time surveillance is situation whereby immediately you detect a case, you will use the fastest electronic medium to communicate from the community to the national level and that is what SORMASN is bringing to Nigeria.
“The benefit of SORMASN is that information will be access very easily, notification will be faster and capacity will be built. We have had series of training for people we are using and that is why this German team has come to do evaluation.”
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Oluyemisi Iyiola who received the German expert also added that “The present administration of Governor Ajimobi has done a lot to curtail outbreak of communicable diseases. We have 632 primary healthcare centres in this state and these centres have been useful in combating the diseases in the past. We will appreciate your technical support.”