One year after the internal declaration of Grade 3 emergency on the northeastern Nigeria, the World Health Organization (WHO) is conducting a comprehensive review of its humanitarian response to address health needs of nearly six million people. WHO declared the Grade 3 humanitarian crisis in Northeastern Nigeria in August 2016 in accordance with standard Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) criteria to reduce avoidable mortality and morbidity through provision of life saving essential health services in the affected region. 

The ongoing review is the third of its kind since August 2016, to enable the organization, scale up its response in northeastern part of the country. The first and second review meetings were conducted in Abuja in November 2016, February 2017 respectively to assess the progress made, and lessons learnt from the health sector response for humanitarian emergency in the affected states.

In his opening remarks at the ongoing review meeting in Abuja (11-13 September, 2017), Dr Wondimagegnehu Alemu, WHO Country Representative (WR) to Nigeria, restated that the review was coming at an auspicious time  to evaluate  the humanitarian emergency operations against response plans with a view to enhancing health service delivery in northeastern Nigeria.

“The review meeting is critical and imperative at this point as the health issues in the northeastern Nigeria crisis evolves rapidly in scope and perspectives,” WR noted.

“WHO as a responsive organization will continue to assess and adapt its operational strategies in line with current health challenges of the region in order to identify best practices and understand what has not worked and how to ensure a responsive and relevant approach,” he added. 

At the end of the review meeting, it is expected that emergency humanitarian experts from all the 3 levels of the organization, will endorse a revised response plan to address residual challenges from the last quarter of 2017 and provide inputs into the 2018-2019 WHO biennium plans.

Technical contact:

• Dr Mary Stephen; Tel: +234 803 639 1332; Email: stephenm [at] who.int