Find innovative strategies to address bottlenecks in REDISSE project - Prof. Okolo

Director-General of the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), Professor Stanley Okolo has charged countries implementing the Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement (REDISSE) project to strive to find innovative strategies to address bottlenecks to achieve optimum population impact.

He noted that a World Bank Implementation Status Report that rated the project performance as moderately satisfactory reflects delays in procurement, implementation and disbursement at country level.

According to him, the above-mentioned delays are also associated with delays in recruiting and training to project implementation unit staff, the attrition rate of staff associated with changes in governments, as well as the delays in establishing steering committees and multi-sector work plans in the first year of the project.

According to him, to date, the project disbursement rate is low, with an average of 17. 2%, of which 26.6% is for REDISSE 1 countries, 13.7% for REDISSE 2 countries, and 7.2% for REDISSE 3 countries, while WAHO disbursement rate is 53% of the International Development Association (IDA) and 87% of the Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) grant.

Speaking at the opening of the fourth Steering Committee Meeting of REDISSE project in Togo’s capital Lome, he stressed the need to address the challenges to ensure that the objectives of the project are achieved.

11 Beneficiary countries

Beneficiary countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone Togo and Mauritania.

The REDISSE project is a regional project funded by the World Bank, covering all the 10 ECOWAS countries and Mauritania in five-year phases from 2016 to 2023.

The first phase covers three countries: including Guinea, Senegal and Sierra Leone; the second phase covers four countries: Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Togo.

Its implementation is in the third phase, covering four countries – Benin, Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

REDISSE’s main objective

REDISSE’s main objective is to strengthen disease surveillance and response within the ECOWAS region and Mauritania.

Successes of REDISSE project

Enumerating the successes of the project so far, Prof. Okolo said it has contributed to capacity building in surveillance, preparedness and response to epidemics and public health emergencies in the ECOWAS region and Mauritania.

He mentioned development and validation of regional policies on sample transcript, ECOWAS regional disease outbreak preparedness and response plans, establishment of steering committee and technical committee, establishment of the One Health regional platform, and provision of regional technical assistance to countries as some of the results achieved.

The regional technical assistance was provided by WAHO and WHO, World Animal Health Organisation (OIE), Centre for International Cooperation in Health and Development, Fondation Merieux, Development of advanced level (Master’s) Field Epidemiology and Laboratory training programme with University of Ghana and the University of Ouagadougou for first cohorts of 50 participants.

Prof. Okolo also listed the dissemination of epidemiology bulletins, implementation of regional disease outbreak simulation exercise on yellow fever, as well as the strengthening of 47 health district centres of epidemiological surveillance in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Togo as achievements worthy of commendation.

He assured that WAHO would continue to play its regional coordination role to ensure the successful implementation of the REDISSE project.

Senior Health Specialist at the World Bank, Dr. John Paul Clark applauded the successes chalked so far, but added that there was a lot more work to be done.

He appealed to all countries to participate effectively in the task of preparing towards resilient diseases surveillance.

He pledged the continuous support of the World Bank, and hoped for stellar years to come in terms of performance.