Nigeria offers to host proposed African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention

Nigeria has become the first country to apply to host the proposed African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDCP). The application was presented by the country's health minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu to the Conference of African Union Ministers of Health and World Health Organisation in Luanda.



Chukwu said the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) was a yardstick for the request; he added that Nigeria was the first in Africa to establish such a centre. According to him, the Nigeria centre had been doing well in conducting researches on disease outbreak, prevention and other public health issues.

He said: "Nigeria, so far, has the best disease surveillance system according to WHO, on the continent of Africa. Actually, Nigeria was the first to offer to host the African Centre for Disease Control followed by Ethiopia and since then we have been working toward it.

"It was inconclusive, though Ethiopia brought it up, the decision was that we should still do more consultation and I believe what we are saying here is part of that consultation."

The minister said many countries outside Africa, including the U.S., supported the ACDCP initiative.

"The idea is to have a strengthened centre for disease control so that when we have an outbreak it will take the lead in investigation and treatment,’’ he said.

Chukwu recalled that Nigeria was the first country to host its neighbours in 2012 to discuss disease control. He said WHO recognised that meeting as the first of its kind in the world that a country initiated.

"What we need is what we always say since 2010 when we first called that meeting on cross border infection control. Infections do not care for passport or visa, diseases just move across borders, not something a single country can curtail.

"You will see what has happened recently, an outbreak started in Guinea before you knew it, it spread to three other countries,’’ he said.