Strengthening Regional Disease Surveillance in West Africa - Crisis Pool

The project supports activities that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries within the scope of the overall project. In particular the project focuses on: (1) ensuring the quality of the implementation and monitoring of scaled-up activities during the pandemic crisis and a geographic reach in West Africa and beyond; and (2) on strengthening integration of gender equality considerations in regional preparedness and response to epidemics. Project activities include: (1) developing an epidemic preparedness and response plan; (2) coordinating with member states to share real-time information related to the outbreak and to increase countries’ surveillance capacity for early detection of suspected cases; (3) coordinating with specialized services in member states to develop a platform for epidemiological surveillance and data collection; and (4) developing a Gender in Preparedness and Response Toolkit to support gender mainstreaming by countries during epidemic crises.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) maintained quality of the implementation and monitoring of scaled-up activities during the pandemic crisis; and (2) increased gender mainstreaming in regional preparedness and response to epidemics.