Strengthening Communities for Action in Response to Disease Outbreaks

Leveraging on Experience from COVID-19 Emergency

Abstract

Building upon the experience from the COVID-19 emergency response against future occurrence will reduce morbidity, morality and the kind of disruption of socio-economic activities witnessed during the pandemic. In spite of the successes recorded during the control of the pandemic, the strength of the communities needs to be reinforced further so as to realize their full potentials in rapid response to outbreak of diseases which are becoming frequent in Nigeria. In this paper, it was shown that community preparedness to response is the panacea. Preparedness for response can be achieved by educating the people on the causes, determinants, preventive protocols and where to receive care timely during an outbreak of infection before it blows out of proportion. The paper advanced the need to strengthen Nigerian communities to respond to diseases outbreak, since they have invaluable qualities that can be harnessed in tackling such situations. There exist abundant human and material resources that can be tapped in order to prevent the escalation of an outbreak of any disease if it occurs. This can be done through drilling of significant others in the communities from time to time for transfer to their members through training of trainers (TOT) workshops. The training should equip the community members with the necessary skills to look inwards to find solution to that kind of emergency situation pending when external aid will arrive. Since health improvement is tied to overall socio-economic and even political development, the people should be imbued with the right attitude and equipped with the necessary skills to improve their earnings. The paper in addition dwelt on community organization as it is essential in ensuring unity of purpose in any effort to halt the spread of disease during an epidemic. Among other things, the present authors recommended that bottom-up and not top-down approach should be adopted in strengthening community action so that such community will be self-reliant in containing diseases outbreak.