The Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday launched a command and control center to protect and assist the public and increase the level of preparedness against future incidents – including explosions, disease outbreaks, natural disasters and conflict.
Through the Command and Control Center, which involves an incident management system (IMS), the ministry will ensure that it can take proactive and swift action against incidents in the country by ways of continuous coordination and monitoring.
The center will also employ healthcare and emergency planning experts and has been developed by experts from the ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the event of a serious incident, the system would send out alarms – it will also produce graphicsof incidents from every province which will be available to the public through its website.
“We have set a threshold for every incident. If it is a big incident, it will alert the control center,” said Mir Lais Mustafa, head of incidents response department of the Command and Control Center.
The Command and Control Center will ensure that responses to incidents are managed systematically, holistically and comprehensively.
According to the ministry, $1 million has been invested into the project.
“We are here today to launch the incident management system in Afghanistan. The incident management system or IMS will help us to better monitor (situations); actually it should help us to even better forecast and prepare and monitor health risks and assist emergency services; and to coordinate a more effective emergency response at a national level,” said Richard Pircon, a representative of WHO.
“The incident management system here is comprised of incident command, the incident support of technical teams that constitutes all parts of the Afghan ministry of health,” he said.
The incident command center will take charge of operational management of the onsite response to any emergencies including infectious disease outbreaks, he added.
The Public Health Minister said the system would be extremely useful for responses to incidents, adding that “the system that has been established enables us to be instantly aware about incidents, take decisions, act swiftly and coordinate the activities”.
The system is connected to all provinces across the country with the main center in Kabul.