Joint external evaluation of the International Health Regulations (‎2005)‎ core capacities of Nigeria

Overview

The Joint External Evaluation (JEE) team acknowledges Nigeria for volunteering for a second JEE after holding its first in 2017 and an internal mid-term JEE in 2019. This JEE uses the third edition of the JEE tool. This revised third edition of the tool incorporates relevant lessons from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other public health emergencies.

Nigeria’s broad efforts to prepare for and respond to emergencies have clearly facilitated its whole-of-government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The unprecedented nature, magnitude and wide societal impact of the pandemic has led to improvisation and innovation. As a result, emergency risk management stakeholders in Nigeria have been keen to combine the many lessons of the pandemic response – consolidated through intra-action reviews – and to address gaps in IHR core capacities identified through the JEE.

The JEE team commends Nigeria for its efforts to monitor and improve health security with openness, transparency and goodwill.

Findings from the joint external evaluation

The JEE mission took place in Abuja from 14–18August 2023. Nigeria’s capacities in 19 technical areas were evaluated through a peer-to-peer, consultative process that brought national subject matter experts and development partners together with the multinational, multidisciplinary expert JEE team for a week of discussion, interaction, and selected site visits. After a week of collaborative talks, this process led to consensus on scores and priority actions across the 19 technical areas, presented with the aim of improving implementation of the IHR (2005) to enhance health security and the resilience of the Nigeria health system in emergencies.

While specific recommendations are made in the respective sections of this report, the evaluation also generated six wider, overarching recommendations. These recommendations, outlined below, address cross-cutting challenges affecting Nigeria’s capacities across many of the different technical areas that were explored in the JEE process.