Public health emergency operations centres in Africa: A cross-sectional study assessing the implementation status of core components and areas for improvement, December 2021

Objective: To assess implementation status of Public Health Emergency
Operations Centres (PHEOCs) in all countries in Africa. Design:
Cross-sectional. Setting: Fifty-four national PHEOC focal points in Africa
responded to an online survey between May and November 2021. Included
variables aimed to assess capacities for each of the four PHEOC core
components. To assess the PHEOCs’ functionality, criteria were defined
from among the collected variables by expert consensus based on PHEOC
operations’ prioritisation. We report results of the descriptive analysis,
including frequencies of proportions. Results: A total of 51 (93%) African
countries responded to the survey. Among these, 41 (80%) have established
a PHEOC. Twelve (29%) of these met 80% or more of the minimum requirements
and were classified as fully functional. Twelve (29%) and 17 (41%) PHEOCs
that met 60%–79% and below 60% of the minimum requirements were classified
as functional and partially functional, respectively. Conclusions:
Countries in Africa made considerable progress in setting up and improving
functioning of PHEOCs. One-third of the responding countries with a PHEOC
have one fulfilling at least 80% of the minimum requirements to operate
the critical emergency functions. There are still several African
countries that either do not have a PHEOC or whose PHEOCs only partially
meet these minimal requirements. This calls for significant collaboration
across all stakeholders to establish functional PHEOCs in Africa.