How does the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) contribute to the evidence based decision-making and practice during COVID-19 pandemic in ECOWAS region?

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Sombié, Issiaka Johnson, Ermel Lokossou, Virgil Amouh, Tete Sow, Abdourahmane Ogbureke, Nanlop Okolo, Stanley
Copyright Year	2020
Abstract	The COVID-19 pandemic required policy makers to make urgent decisions to limit the spread of the disease. International and regional health bodies and research institutions have a role in supporting decision makers and health actors in providing accurate and timely research evidence and guidance in decision making and practice. In ECOWAS region, the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) has experience in promoting evidence use decision making and practice as part of its role as Health Policy and Research Organisation. Promoting the use of evidence to influence policy and practice is possible through various approaches including training, the development of guides and policy briefs, the synthesis and sharing of evidence, and the organisation of meetings to share experiences. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, WAHO has deployed several approaches to bring the use of evidence to decision-makers and stakeholders to influence policy and practice. To improve practices, WAHO has organized regional training workshops on laboratory diagnostic, surveillance and simulation exercises of outbreak response for key actors, as well as webinars on different aspects of COVID-19 pandemic surveillance, coordination and management. In addition, a synthesis of the most recent evidence and epidemiologic models were developed to enlighten decision makers in selecting and implementation response interventions.
Journal	The Pan African Medical Journal
Volume Number	37
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7733344
Issue Number	Suppl 1
Issue Number	suppl 1
PubMed reference number	33343799
e-ISSN	19378688
DOI	10.11604/pamj.supp.2020.37.20.25625
Language	English
Publisher	The African Field Epidemiology Network
Publisher Date	2020-10-02
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	The Pan African Medical Journal (ISSN: 1937-8688). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright: Issiaka Sombié et al.
Subject Keyword	Evidence use decision making practice COVID-19 West Africa
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Medicine