CDC to replace NCOC: Dr Faisal Sultan

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to Prime Minister on health Dr. Faisal Sultan has said the transition is underway to hand over functions, roles and responsibilities of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) to the Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad, and soon the NCOC would be wound up permanently.

“Yes, ultimately NCOC had to be wrapped up and its role and responsibilities are being handed over to the newly created CDC at NIH Islamabad. The transition is underway and hopefully, the process would be completed by the end of this month”, Dr Faisal Sultan told The News on Saturday. The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) was established in March 2020 as a nerve centre to synergize and articulate a unified national effort against Covid-19, and to implement the decisions of the National Coordination Committee when the deadly virus had started spreading globally.

Talking to The News, Dr Faisal Sultan said the government had reformed the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad so that it could effectively deal with any health emergency in the future and a Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC) has been created within the NIH to play the role of NCOC. “March 27 had been fixed as a final date to shut down the NCOC and its role and responsibilities are being handed over to CDC at NIH Islamabad”, he said but added that it was not a final deadline as the transition takes time, but expressed the hope the process would be completed by the end of this month or early April 2022. To a query, Dr Faisal Sultan said although the process of selecting the head of NCOC is underway the centre is functional at the NIH Islamabad and a team of experts is already working there, adding if needed some of the expertise available to the NCOC would be made available to the CDC to work smoothly.

Other officials at the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS, R&C) said Prime Minister Imran Khan was expected to announce the closure of NCOC while inaugurating a Covid-19 monument, at Shakarparian, Islamabad to highlight Pakistan’s success against the viral pandemic and to recognize the services of those who sacrificed their lives. They said the closure of NCOC was expected at the end of last month but was delayed due to the emergence of the fifth wave of the Covid-19, and now when that period is over, the government would announce a ‘victory of Covid-19’ by shutting down the NCOC and handing over all its roles, functions and responsibilities to the newly-created CDC at NIH Islamabad.

The NCOC is the main entity in charge of Pakistan's Covid-19 effort's policies and implementation and makes suggestions to the Prime Minister's National Coordination Committee for timely actions related to the national Covid-19 response. The NCOC includes specialists from both the civil and military institutions and is currently being headed by a major general while Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umer is the in charge of the initiative.

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates also praised the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) and the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), in fighting diseases. In his blog, Gates wrote: "Last week I also went to Pakistan, where I visited two of the country’s innovative command centres for fighting diseases, the NEOC for polio eradication and the NCOC for Covid."

"The NEOC uses state-of-the-art informational tools developed by Global Polio Eradication Initiative to track polio so that no child is ever paralysed by it again," he added.

The NCOC, Gates said has applied resources and lessons learned from the polio programme — including data analysis, vaccine campaign planning, and community engagement— to coordinate Pakistan’s response to COVID. "Both centres blew me away," the philanthropist said.