Armed Forces to be supported to help in pandemic situations - NADMO

The Pandemic Continuity plan of the Ghana Armed Forces would be supported to enable it support national response and pandemic crisis in the country.

“This would ensure their resilience and continuous operations in the event of a pandemic emergency”.

Mr Ebenezer Dosoo, Deputy National Coordinator of National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) made this remarks at the stakeholders’ dissemination meeting on pandemic preparedness.

The event was on the theme: ‘Building Institutional Capacity for Pandemic Preparedness’.

Mr Dosoo said this followed a number of gaps which were identified in the just ended tabletop simulation exercise which tested the Pandemic Plan of the country of which the role of the military was found to be silence.

“We are committed to ensuring that all institutions across all sectors are supported to develop institutional capacity to compliment the efforts of government”, adding that it requires total support and commitment through the provision of resource to ensure sustainable implementation of activities for pandemic preparedness, he noted.

The meeting was intended to update beneficiary and partner institutions on progress made so far on the two projects being implemented to build and strengthen institutional capacity for pandemic preparedness.

The projects are; “Strengthening Institutional Capacity for pandemic response through Public-Private partnership” (Pandemic Project I) and “Enhancing Risk Communication at entry points through Development of effective communication tools for information Exchange” (Pandemic Project II).

The meeting which was attended by about seventy participants were drawn from the various Departments and Agencies, Ministries, NGOs and Municipals Assemblies was organised by NADMO in collaboration with GIZ Regional Coordination Unit for HIV and Tuberculosis, (GIZ-ReCHT) and support from Pandemic Preparedness Initiative (PPI).

Issues discussed among other things include; an over view of the National Pandemic Preparedness and Response Plan and programmes being implemented to develop and strengthen capacity; an over view of Pandemic Projects I and II and Institutional Business Continuity Planning (Case study of Ghana Revenue Authority).

Mr Holger Till, Team Leader-GIZ-ReCHT who discussed Business Continuity Plan and Workplace programmes and policies on influenza, flu and other pandemics, explained that institutional measures need to be put in place to address the threat of pandemics.

He said this would enable the institutions to perform critical roles and continue with operations in the event of a pandemic.

He encouraged management of various organisations without a workplace policy on influenza pandemics to introduced one in the organisation.**