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.

United States Agency for International Development Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, Save the Children, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, UK Med, EcoHealth Alliance, Mercy Malaysia

This website is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the READY initiative. READY (not an acronym) is supported by USAID’s  Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance,  Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)  and is led by Save the Children  in partnership with the  Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, the  Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs,  UK-Med, EcoHealth Alliance, and Mercy Malaysia. The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of Save the Children. The information provided on this website does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, any or all consortium partners, or the United States Government, and is not official U.S. Government information.