Lubango - The Huíla authorities have opened the first Public Health Emergency Operations Centre, a facility set up to coordinate the information system with a view to providing efficient responses to the management of accidents and epidemics,the local Health director, Paulo Luvangamo, told ANGOP on Friday.
This is the first operations centre set up in Angola, an ‘essential’ platform to manage public health emergencies and help prevent common problems such as a lack of leadership, a situation that leads to delays in decision-making, inadequate management of resources and poor coordination.
The equipment was assembled by a team from the Regional Programme for the Improvement of Disease Surveillance Systems (REDISSE), one of the Ministry of Health's projects funded by the World Bank.
Paulo Luvangamo explained that the project is being implemented throughout the country, but Huíla was the first to have it, following the completion of the creation of technical conditions and infrastructure, an investment that will positively influence the capacity for interaction in the health sector, as it brings satellite radio communication between health units to read epidemiological information.
‘In Huíla there is already a communication system, but the implementation mechanism is not effective and with this new centre, communication with Luanda and the other municipalities will be in real time, if we have an epidemiological crisis the intervention to counter it will be faster, this is highly advanced technology and we believe it is a huge gain that the province will have,’ he said.
The World Bank team visited the Regional Public Health Laboratory, which will receive funding after restructuring, as well as the Lubango Central Hospital, as part of the underway training program, as the health unit will be a training hub identified by the Ministry's Health Specialisation Institute Training Unit. BP/MS/DAN/AMP