Namibia received an onboarding training on the Epidemic Intelligence for Open Sources (EIOS) community to ensure that health threats are identified and responded to early and rapidly with no impact on lives and livelihoods. The training is being rollout by the WHO Regional Office for Africa to all its 47 member states with the aim of building a community of well-trained public health intelligence professionals.  

The training included eight modules that were delivered through a participatory approach including power point presentations, self-practice exercises and case studies. The EIOS initiative is a unique collaboration between various public health stakeholders around the globe aimed to build capacity for early detection and response. The EIOS initiative draws on scientific evidence that demonstrates the contribution of event-based surveillance to the early detection of risks and threats to human health. It is a web-based platform that relies on scanning the media (formal and informal) for early detection and verification of information that could be of public health risk. 

The training was held on 16-18 August 2023 and attended by 24 officials from the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform, Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, Namibia Institute of Pathology and Namibia Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme as well as the WHO country office. 

The EIOS initiative is part of WHO broader effort to strengthen and transform surveillance systems in the African region. The training was a crucial step for Namibia to strengthen its event base surveillance capacities with the goal of early detection, verification, assessment and communication of public health threats using publicly available information. The participants had a chance to learn from Zambia experience on the implementation of event base surveillance and EIOS application. Important deliberations have also taken place regarding the next steps for institutionalizing the EIOS in the country. Namibia is now part of the EIOS global community, dedicated to prevent and mitigate the impact of health threats on lives around the world.