Capacity assessment of the Gambia’s emergency preparedness and response system

Abstract

Introduction: West Africa continues to experience recurrent epidemics of infectious diseases and other public health emergencies. The consequences of their disasters have been worsening of health, increased morbidity and mortality, livelihoods and property posing a threat to global health security. Assessment of levels of preparedness and response enables countries identify the gaps in the system and what needs to be done to fill these gaps and address bottlenecks in the system. We evaluated The Gambia's mechanisms for preparedness and response to epidemics and health emergencies in the ECOWAS region.

Methods: We conducted a desk review of Gambia's IHR scores, JEE report and actions taken after JEE. We conducted interviews with on IHR core capacities with key staff of the Ministry of Health and other relevant stakeholder organisations who were involved in surveillance and response activities.

Results: The Gambia doesn't have a functional national public health institute but has policy framework documents that guides the provision of health activities in the country. The country has a Field Epidemiology Training Programme which strengthens real time surveillance activities and also builds capacity to respond to public health emergencies. However, the country has no dedicated funding or budget line for preparedness and response.

Conclusion: The Gambia has fully developed a number of health policies and plans for various aspects of health. However, there is no functional public health institute to coordinate and fully implement them. The lack of a dedicated budget line also impedes the implementation.