Senegal: Humanitarian actors, others get training to manage pandemic
More than sixty experts from six West African countries are meeting in Dakar, Senegal within the framework of the Pandemic Readiness and Response Exercise.
This five-day program, which began Monday, is part of a series of simulation exercises organized by the World Food Program (WFP).
It aims to prepare humanitarian actors and national governments to respond quickly to severe influenza pandemics.
“This simulation exercises are looking at the effects of very significant large-scale disasters, which would affect primarily urban populations,” said Peter Scott Bowden of the Operations Department at the World Food Program.
“It is using the threat to urban population of an epidemic which actually becomes a global pandemic of a highly virulent influenza virus,” he added.
Bowden said the exercise is not focusing on the health issue so much, but on what he called the “maintenance of critical services.”
“This means how will people be able to get access to food, access to medicines and how will authorities both public and private be able to keep things like the energy sector going,” he stressed.
The simulation exercise is for six countries: Benin, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal.
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