Response to public health emergencies requires continued adaptation and innovation. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is the country’s public health institute with the mandate to protect the health of Nigerians. Achieving such mandate in resource-limited settings with divergent demographic characteristics of the citizens, necessitates the readiness to learn from experience and to develop policies and activities in line with lessons learnt and best practices. This practice paper describes the initiatives of the NCDC towards adapting its public health response activities by establishing learning systems across its structure. The paper informs on some of the steps taken by the Centre regarding learning from the Lassa fever outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. It concludes that commitment and investments are key requirements for learning and adapting public health responses to achieve success with combating infectious diseases.
Background. COVID-19 is a global health crisis. By 2021, Nigeria had 230,000 cases. As the national public health institute, NCDC leads the COVID-19 response. Due to constant contact with infected patients, agency employees are a t high-risk. Here, we describe the transmission and psychosocial effects of COVID-19 among infected NCDC workers as a learning curve for mini-mizing occupational transmission among frontline public health workers in future outbreaks. Methods. We approved and enrolled all NCDC COVID-19-infected personnel from November to December 2020. We collect-ed data using SurveyMonkey. STATA 14 analyzed the data. Results. 172 of 300 afflicted NCDC staff participated in this study. One-third were between 30 and 39; most were male (104, 60.5%). Most participants worked in the lab (30%) or surveillance (24%). Only 19% (33/172) of participants con-firmed pandemic deployment. Most reported interaction with a confirmed case (112/65.1%). Most people (78, 45.3%) felt unhappy when diagnosed. Anger, worry, and low motivation also ranked high (19). The majority reported adequate financial, moral, or psychosocial assistance (26, 70.6%). Conclusions. NCDC staff had a high SARS-CoV-2 infection rate and emotional damage. We urge stricter infection control methods when sending staff for outbreaks response to prevent additional transmission, as well as ongoing psychosocial and eco-nomic assistance for afflicted workers.
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