Ghana drills its outbreak command centres
Fifty specialists from across the country trained in Accra to run the operations rooms that coordinate a response when disease strikes.
Accra — Ghana has put 50 of its emergency specialists through a week of training on how to run the command centres that coordinate the response to a disease outbreak, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says.
The training was held in Accra from 21 to 25 September and brought together experts from national and local level.
What the centres do
A public health emergency operations centre is the room where an outbreak is managed. It brings command, operations, planning, logistics and finance into one place, so that the people tracking cases, moving supplies and briefing ministers are working from the same information.
Over the past two years Africa CDC has helped Ghana equip its centres with communications and data systems and train the staff who run them.
'How effectively our systems work together'
"Our success will not be measured simply by the number of PHEOCs established," said Dr Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, director of public health at the Ghana Health Service. It would be measured, he said, by "how effectively our systems work together".
Dr Mathew Tut Moses of Africa CDC told participants they were expected to pass on what they had learned. "Every participant here is a multiplier," he said. "These competencies must flow to the district teams."
Beyond health
Those in the room came from well outside the health service: veterinary and environmental services, immigration, port health, local government, the military, the police and civil society, alongside the World Health Organization.
Next, Ghana is to update its emergency plans, strengthen staffing, run simulation exercises and draw up a costed national training plan.
Source: Africa CDC, 2 October 2026.
