The Government of Liberia(GoL), through the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), has launched the National Technical Guide for “Event-Based Surveillance (EBS)” that will help curtail the outbreak of infectious diseases.
The guide represents a significant milestone in the ongoing efforts to strengthen Liberia’s public health surveillance system and serves as a blueprint and guideline for stakeholders at all levels.
Event-Based Surveillance is expected to provide comprehensive information, guidelines and tools that will enhance to capacity to detect and respond to a wide range of health events, including outbreaks of infectious diseases, natural disasters and other public emergencies.
Speaking Friday, April 4, 2025 during the EBS launch in Monrovia, the Director General of the NPHIL, Dr. Dougbeh Chris Nyan, said that the tool is the culmination of extensive collaboration and dedication from professional within the Ministry of Health, NPHIL and partners.
According to him, the launch of the guidelines reflects the commitment to ensure that Liberia remains at the forefront of public health surveillance, capacity of promptly identifying and mitigating threats to the communities.
The NPHIL Director General also encouraged all public health professionals, health workers and stakeholders to utilize the tools as a valuable resource in their daily work. He explained that by adhering to the principles and practices outlined in the guidelines, they can collectively contribute to a safer and healthy Liberia.
However, Director Nyan applauded the contributors for the development of the documents; adding that he looks forward to collaborating with them to strengthening the country’s health surveillance capacities.
For his part, Africa CDC Regional Director, Dr. Kokou Alinon said, “In terms of public health; in the process of event-based surveillance, health professionals begin with the senior detection and go for the verification and while it is identifying, it becomes events. Most of the events are coming from the communities, for which we know that a detector-based surveillance is rich with many things.”
Dr Kokou disclosed that Africa CDC in collaboration with WHO are working hard to settle the event-based surveillance because most of the people in Africa do not go to hospital when they have issues.
He said, since 2021, Africa CDC has worked with Liberia to adopt the resources and the event-based surveillance framework and to also link the event management system to enable the sharing the data.
“Public health starts with surveillance and ends with surveillance. Event-Based Surveillance has tools that help to locate symptom at hospital, remote and communities’ areas,” Dr. Kokou stated. According to his, the Technical Guidelines with establish and start the regionalization of event-based surveillance in Africa.
Speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Catherine Thomas Cooper, Deputy Minister of Health and Chief Medical Officer assured the gathering of the ministry commitment to the guidelines to ensure that the document is operationalize. Dr. Cooper also spoke about the strong partnership between MOH and NPHIL; stating that the partnership will be more strengthened as they go alone.
