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A healthcare worker at a Save the Children-supported health facility during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. September 18, 2019. Hugh Kinsella Cunningham / Save the Children

Outbreak Coordination: Opportunities and Barriers for Greater NGO Engagement

January 26, 2023 | 08:00-09:00 Washington, DC / 13:00-14:00 London

Moderator: David Wightwick, CEO, UK-Med
Panelists: Linda Doull, Global Health Cluster Coordinator, WHO; Emmanuel Barasa, Health Cluster Coordinator, Jonglei State, South Sudan, Save the Children; Virginie Lefèvre, Head of Program and Partnerships, Amel Association International; Dr. Paul Lopodo, Technical Lead Ebola Response, Uganda, Save the Children

Watch the recording:


The READY initiative held this one-hour webinar to launch our recently published guidance, Infectious Disease Outbreak Response Coordination: An Introductory Guide for Non-Governmental Organizations. The purpose of this guide is to help national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) better understand the basic elements of outbreak response coordination in major disease outbreaks.

This webinar showcased an expert panel discussion on the opportunities and barriers for humanitarian actors working at the national and sub-national levels to meaningfully engage with outbreak response coordination. Bringing together global, national, and sub-national perspectives and expertise, panelists discussed the role of NGOs in outbreak response, how they can most effectively navigate outbreak response coordination mechanisms, and how to effectively contribute to nationally-led responses.

Featured expert moderator and panelists

Moderator: David Wightwick, CEO, UK-Med. David joined UK-Med in January 2018 as Chief Executive Officer. His career began as an aid worker in Kosovo for the International Medical Corps and has spanned 30 years of leading and managing complex humanitarian crises for Save the Children, the World Health Organization, Merlin, and GOAL. David has delivered humanitarian responses in major crises including the civil war in Liberia, west Africa Ebola outbreak, war in Yemen, South Asia tsunamic, Covid-19 pandemic, and war in Ukraine.

Panelists:

  • Linda Doull, Global Health Cluster Coordinator, WHO. Linda has 30 years of experience in the international health and humanitarian sector, having worked with Medical Aid for Palestinians, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Merlin. Linda took up the role of Global Health Cluster Coordinator in September 2014, and is responsible under WHO leadership for overall coordination and strategic direction of one of the leading global partnerships for humanitarian health action. Currently there are 31 active Health Clusters, with 900 national and international partners, addressing the health needs of 98 million people affected by humanitarian crises.
  • Emmanuel Barasa, Health Cluster Coordinator, Jonglei State, South Sudan, Save the Children. Emmanuel is a Public Health professional with 11 years of international experience in both Humanitarian and Development contexts. Emmanuel is currently seconded to WHO by Save the Children South Sudan working as Health Cluster Co-coordinator in Jonglei State and Greater Pibor Administrative Area (GPAA). Previously, Emmanuel worked with Concern Worldwide in Somalia/Somaliland as a Health and Nutrition Program Coordinator and with the Premiere Urgence International (PUI) as a Senior Health and Nutrition Coordinator in both Ukraine and South Sudan.
  • Virginie Lefèvre, Head of Program and Partnerships, Amel Association International. Virginie is a Jurist who has been working for more than 15 years with NGOs, in the health and human rights sectors. Since 2010, she has been living in Lebanon where she is involved in the humanitarian crises responses. She is now the Head of Programs & Partnerships of Amel Association International, a Lebanese NGO co-leading the health sector, a member of the Lebanon Humanitarian and Development NGOs Forum (LHDF) Steering Committee and of the ICVA Board.
  • Dr. Paul Lopodo, Technical Lead Ebola Response, Uganda, Save the Children. Paul has over 19 years of humanitarian and development experience in programs development, delivery and quality with particular focus on public health care programming and strategic planning and development. After working as a Senior Health Advisor and later as the Deputy Team Program Lead, He was deployed in over 20 countries with SCUK and later GEHSP since 2014. Paul was recently, up to Dec 2022, in Uganda deployed as an Ebola technical and national response lead and has worked previously in other SCI Ebola responses particularly in DRC and Guinea Conakry as both technical, operation and Ebola response lead.

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Register for this webinar | Please note that live interpretation will be provided in Spanish, French and Arabic for this event / la interpretación en vivo estará disponible en español / La traduction en direct sera fournie en français / سيتم توفير الترجمة الحية باللغة العربية | Subscribe to READY’s email list to receive future announcements about training opportunities, webinars, and other updates
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This event is hosted by the READY initiative, led by Save the Children, and funded by the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

Understanding the Centrality of Children and their Protection in Infectious Disease Outbreaks

January 18, 2023 | 15:30-16:30 East Africa / 07:30-08:30 Washington / 12:30-13:30 London | Moderator: Sarah Collis Kerr | Panelists: Nidhi Kapur, Jean Syanda, Violet Birungi, Dr Alex Mutanganayi Yogolelo, Dr. Ayesha Kadir

This was the first webinar of the Child Protection and Health Integration During Infectious Disease Outbreaks series, Understanding the Centrality of Children and their Protection in Infectious Disease Outbreaks.

During this one-hour webinar, experts discussed why children are particularly vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks, reviewed the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, and reflected on lessons learned from recent outbreak responses.

Watch the recording:

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Moderator

Sarah Collis Kerr, Lead Technical Advisor, READY, Save the Children: Sarah Collis Kerr is a humanitarian health professional specializing in emergency outbreak response and health program coordination in crisis settings. She holds an MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc in Nursing. Sarah has worked in several humanitarian contexts and outbreaks all over the world including Sierra Leone and Rwanda for Ebola; Northern Nigeria; Samoa during the measles outbreak; Greece for the migrant/refugee crisis; and Cox’s Bazar for the Rohingya COVID-19 response. Before joining the READY initiative, she was the Regional Health Delegate for the Red Cross in Middle East North Africa. Sarah is deeply passionate about protecting the right to health for all, specifically women and girls. She believes strongly in the need to empower affected communities and local organizations, whilst strengthening cross-sectoral preparedness and capacity for outbreak response.

Panelists/Presenters

  • Nidhi Kapur, Child Protection Specialist, Independent Consultant: Nidhi Kapur is a protection, gender, and inclusion specialist with fifteen years of field-based experience. Motivated by a strong interest in the complexities of programming in conflict and post-conflict zones, Nidhi has been deployed to various countries as part of emergency response teams. She has worked on a multitude of issues with and on behalf of children and their communities, including in relation to infectious disease outbreaks. In addition to her work with READY to improve collaboration between the health and child protection sector, she has been commissioned by the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action to co-author mini-guides for field practitioners working in a variety of outbreak settings.
  • Jean Syanda, Humanitarian Child Protection Advisor, Global Center Humanitarian Technical Team, Save the Children: Jean is the Child Protection (CP) lead for READY and oversees the Child Protection unit of the United States (US)-funded portfolio of Save the Children US for East and Southern Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia, and a few countries in Asia. She has 15 years of experience in humanitarian work with a focus on general protection, gender-based violence (GBV), and CP programming, having worked in many humanitarian crises and conflict-affected zones. She worked with refugees, internally-displaced persons (IDPs), and vulnerable communities, with a strong emphasize on establishing, creating, and strengthening human rights access systems to populations of concern. Her most recent work included providing technical guidance and support to and overseeing Protection projects in Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kenya.<\li>
  • Violet Birungi, Head of Health and Nutrition Uganda Country Office, Save the Children: Violet Birungi has more than 15 years of experience in the field of health and nutrition programming, management, social behavior change and communication, training, advocacy, WASH, and community health projects particularly with vulnerable groups in both humanitarian and development programming. At Food for the Hungry, Violet led the Health and Nutrition portfolio and supported the business development function there. Prior to Food for the Hungry, Violet was the Country Program Manager of MAP International Uganda. Shea also worked with Watoto Child Care Ministries as the Head of Public Health where she has fundraised greatly, designed and provided oversight to successful public health projects.
  • Dr Alex Mutanganayi Yogolelo, Team Leader, Kinshasa DRC Country Office, Save the Children: Dr Alex started his humanitarian career in local Congolese NGOs as a health advisor and medical doctor. He joined Save the Children in October 2014 to respond to the West Africa Ebola outbreak. Since then, he has held medical advisor positions with various international NGOs in Chad, Haiti, Guinea, and DRC responding to several humanitarian crises and infectious disease outbreaks such as HIV, COVID-19, and Ebola in North Kivu, Beni, and Kinshasa as the clinical lead. He now leads the Kinshasa field office for Save the Children and is also the Acting Health and Nutrition Technical Advisor.
  • Dr. Ayesha Kadir, Senior Humanitarian Health Advisor, Save the Children: Ayesha Kadir is a pediatrician and public health researcher. Her work is focused on understanding and meeting the needs of children and families in deprivation and crisis settings. Before leading the humanitarian health team at Save the Children UK, Dr. Kadir worked in pediatric emergency medicine and social pediatrics in Europe and in humanitarian settings. Her research and advocacy focus on the effects of migration, armed conflict, and other forms of violence on children and families, and in finding effective ways to protect and promote child and family health, wellbeing, and rights. Dr. Kadir has worked in east, west, and southern Africa, the Middle East, western and eastern Europe, and the United States with international NGOs, universities, governments, and the World Health Organization.

    • This event was hosted by the USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance-supported READY initiative.

    About the Series: Child Protection and Health Integration During Infectious Disease Outbreaks

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    Children are often the most vulnerable group in major infectious disease outbreaks, either directly from the disease itself or the indirect effects such as disruption to essential services and movement restrictions. With recent Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and DRC and an unprecedented number of cholera outbreaks around the world, there is a growing and urgent need for timely and effective child protection and health collaboration and integration to ensure the needs of children and their families are prioritized during outbreak response.

    To strengthen integration and collaboration between child protection and health actors, READY facilitated this three-part inter-agency webinar series. Each webinar took place during the same one-hour period (15:30-16:30 EAT / 7:30-8:30 AM EST/ 12:30-13:30 GMT). The topics and dates of the webinars were:

    These webinars are intended for health and child protection actors working within NGOs in East, Central, and Southern Africa, but may also interest actors working in other countries, regions, and agencies. The webinars were presented in English with live interpretation into French and Arabic.

    This series was hosted by the READY initiative, led by Save the Children, and funded by the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

    Subscribe to READY’s email list to receive future announcements about training opportunities, webinars, and other updates