By Iyemah David
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has inaugurated a five-year strategic and implementation plan.
The centre unveiled the plan (2023- 2027) at its Health Security Partners’ meeting in Abuja on Tuesday with the theme “Vision to Action,” reflecting its commitment to the ministerial agenda for the health sector which has health security as its fourth pillar.
The Director-General of health agency, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, said the inauguration manifested the agency’s mandate of advancing the impact of health security interventions in the country based on Strategic, Ambitious, working with Speed and at Scale (SASS) mantra.
He said that the plan aligned with the presidential and ministerial agenda for health.
He added that the 2023-2027 plan included digital transformation agenda complemented by aspirations for high-quality crosscutting public health informatics.
Adetifa said “the strategic plan seeks to sustain the strong vision of the NCDC, underpinned by clearly defined goals, supported by well-articulated implementation and delivery plans.
“Exactly six years ago, the NCDC inaugurated its first strategy with the theme — “Idea to Reality”, which outlined a roadmap for the agency to achieve its vision and mission.
“In 2022, we conducted an end-term review of the implementation of the 2017 – 2022 strategy to identify successes, challenges and learning to develop the next five-year strategic plan.”
The NCDC boss said that the change in strategy reflected the agency’s priority in strengthening subnational health security in partnership with the state and local governments to ensure better coordination in the newly created Subnational Support Department.
Dr Adetifa explained that the strategy would also equip the Department of Planning, Research and Statistics with the tools and training to advance monitoring, evaluation, and learning within the agency, in line with best practices.
He said, “the document detailing the strategic and implementation plan was launched by the NCDC top management, with other key stakeholders from the public and private sectors.
“NCDC’s vision remains a healthier and safer Nigeria through the prevention and control of diseases of public health importance.
“The vision cascades into a mission statement, further broken down into seven key strategic goals, 41 objectives, and 225 corresponding activities with defined outcomes for the next five years.
“Furthermore, a performance management structure has been instituted to oversee and coordinate the execution of various initiatives to assess NCDC’s progress toward achieving its strategic goals.”
He said that the framework would prioritise and align efforts across the agency’s departments and divisions to enable development partners to key in for collaboration.
He also said it would protect the health of Nigerians against emerging public health threats and evolving challenges.
NCDC conducted an end-term review of the implementation of the 2017-2022 strategy to identify successes, challenges and learnings built on to develop the new five-year strategy.
