Oluwafunbi Bello 
ABEOKUTA, Nigeria – The Ogun State Government says it has successfully managed seven disease outbreaks in 2025 and is reinforcing infection prevention and control systems across its primary healthcare facilities to improve epidemic readiness.
The Commissioner for Health, Tomi Coker, discloses this at the close-out of the Epidemic-Ready Primary Health Care (ERPHC) pilot project, implemented by the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) with support from Resolve to Save Lives.
Coker describes the intervention as transformative, saying it has reshaped how the state detects and responds to disease outbreaks at the grassroots. “Before COVID-19, infection prevention and control was weak at the primary healthcare level,” she says. “Today, anything that breaks out will be caught early.”
Coker says decentralised surveillance has reduced response time and costs, allowing local government teams to act without waiting for state-level intervention. “Outbreaks are now detected early, sometimes right at the point of entry,” she says. “They don’t even reach my office anymore.”
AFENET’s Regional Director and Country Lead, Patrick Nguku, says the ERPHC model has proven effective and should be scaled nationwide. “This project shows that strong primary healthcare systems are Nigeria’s first line of defence against epidemics,” Nguku says.
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Juliet Jacob 
Koko Maxwella