As part of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Africa Region’s initiative, 65 members of the Rwandan emergency response team have received training on how to coordinate a rapid response.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and other health emergencies affecting Africa, the WHO initiated reforms to better equip the continent with greater response capacities.

The latest of a series of trainings, organized by the WHO, the Ministry of Health and the Africa CDC, began on February 27 and was concluded on Friday, March 3 in Karongi District with the emergency responders from different ministries and security organs equipped with essential skills in the coordination of rapid emergency response to public health issues, such as natural disasters and complex emergencies.

The WHO and Africa CDC joined efforts to develop the AVoHC-SURGE team across the continent, as one of the flagship initiatives established to improve the capacity of WHO’s 47 member states in Africa to prepare, detect and respond to public health emergencies through a multi-sectoral coordination approach.

AVoHC is a reference to Africa CDC’s initiative "African Volunteer Health Corps” initiative while SURGE refers to WHO’s initiative, "Strengthening & Utilizing Response Groups for Emergencies.”

Triggered by unprecedented global attention to health emergencies the world, the AVoHC-SURGE initiative was established as an African-driven solution that reflects regional, national, and local needs to respond to public health emergencies within the first 24 hours of confirmation.

"This is one of WHO’s three flagship initiatives and it is part of our aim to make sure that member states have greater capacities to respond to any emergencies that may occur,” Dr Jerry-Jonas Mbasha, Operational Partners Coordination Officer at WHO Africa Region, explained.

"This initiative has four pillars, one of them dealing with the health workforce. We are trying to build the capacity of the AVoHC-SURGE responders. Rwanda has been able to identify key responders, who will be part of the 3,000 responders we are aiming to train in the African region,” Dr Mbasha said.

Besides the SURGE initiative, the other two flagship projects are PROSE (Promoting Resilience of Systems for Emergencies) and TASS (Transforming African Surveillance Systems).

Rwanda being of the countries in which the initiative is implemented, training participants were drawn from different institutions, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Emergency Management, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Rwanda Biomedical Centre as well as the security forces.

The training aims at equipping the participants from different backgrounds with skills and information crucial in building a pool of responders who are able to respond very quickly.

The national team, trained by experts from across the continent, is expected to be able to help other countries which may have emergencies.

Dr Mbasha explained that like the facilitators, who came from Nigeria, Botswana, Senegal, DR Congo and Egypt, the Rwandan key emergency responders will facilitate similar training in order to save lives in other countries in the Africa region.

"I have learnt that some Rwandan key responders already went to Kenya to support the Cholera response. That is the outcome we want to see in different countries, to have local capacities, and Kenya will definitely benefit from Rwanda's capacity in its cholera response,” he said.

The emergency experts said the training opened new horizons for them.

"It is a privilege to have attended this training. As the pandemic showed us, the health sector alone cannot respond to a crisis. We use to think that we knew what to do in times of crisis but as Covid showed that we need more, we need to train a bigger number of responders, because you never how big a crisis will be,” Dr Vanessa Mupenzi Umubyeyi, a strategic advisor to RBC’s Director-General.

"In particular, we have had a session on the humanitarian side of emergency response, which focused on how to take care of people during an outbreak,” said Methode Gasana Ngabo, in charge of animal disease control at the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB).

"What we have learnt is cooperation between sectors to tackle the problem. That’s what can guarantee the solution to any problem or issue facing the society,” Ngabo said.

For Jose Edouard Munyangaju, a Medicines Registration and Variations Assessment Analyst at the Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority, the multi-sectoral approach informed by a humanitarian response, will enable the different institutions to better respond to health emergencies.

"From this training, my takeaway is the humanitarian cycle programme, which is something new to how Rwanda FDA works. It is about how you analyse a situation in terms of humanitarian needs, the way you mobilise resources, and the different principles of humanitarian activities,” Munyangaju said.

"We’re ready to respond to future emergencies. We’ve had different sessions, learnt about different techniques and you can feel from the team that everyone is ready; they want to go out there and help the people,” he said.