EVALUATION OF THE HEALTH EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS STRATEGIES OF HEALTH INSTITUTIONS IN BAYELSA STATE

Abstract This paper evaluated the emergency preparedness and response strategies for public health institutions in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The aim was to identify the policy on public health emergency preparedness strategy in the health institutions in Bayelsa State and also to determine the level of emergency preparedness in the health institutions across Bayelsa State. Descriptive survey design guided the research, targeting an estimated population of 5,086 health personnel, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, community health officers, medical laboratory scientists, and other relevant staff. A sample of 735 health care workers was used in the study and distributed across primary, secondary, and tertiary care facilities. Data collection was carried out using structured questionnaire and WHO health emergency preparedness checklist Descriptive statistics and Chi-square were used for data analyses. Results revealed that 63% of the study participants affirmed the availability of emergency preparedness policy in the health institutions across Bayelsa State while the Chi-square results showed that there is no statistically significant difference in the ratings on emergency preparedness and response levels across health institutions in Bayelsa state (ꭓ2 = 8.60; p = 0.072) but there was a significant difference in perceptions of emergency preparedness and responses among health workers across the different local government areas of the State (ꭓ2 = 162.66; p = 0.001). The results on level of emergency preparedness revealed moderate level of leadership and triage system (42.5%), moderate level of Communication, Safety, and Security level (42.9%), average level of Logistic/Supply, Health workforce and operational capacity (52.4%) and average level of surge capacity (51.8%) The study concluded that there is availability of emergency preparedness policy in the health institutions across Bayelsa State and there is moderate to average level of health emergency preparedness across the health institutions in the state.