EAC prepares member states' intl airports for resumption of flights

As countries prepare to relax travel restrictions and open up their airports in the coming months, the East African Community, or EAC, has been strengthening the capacity of airport staff for prevention and detection of coronavirus in preparation for reopening.

Towards that end, the EAC secretariat and the EAC Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency are implementing emergency coronavirus intervention training for staff at the nine international airports in the six member states.

The program is being financed by the German government, which has been working with the EAC secretariat in a joint program dubbed Support to Pandemic Preparedness in the EAC region since March 2017.

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the German government committed an additional $1.1 million to the $6.8 million program, part of which will be used for training.

A total of 270 key airport personnel will become trainers across the region and will subsequently develop and conduct their own classes to roll-out the training sessions.

The course design and curriculum development is based on the International Health Regulations, best practices of the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control, as well as the Standards and Recommended Practices of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Taking into account social distancing requirements, the two-day training will involve a wide range of staff with close contact to passengers and their luggage, such as airport medical service providers, aircraft and airline operators, select crew members, staff at immigration and customs, and cargo and baggage handlers.

The aim of the training, which will be implemented by air ambulance organization AMREF Flying Doctors, is to build staff knowledge on safety measures, surveillance, prevention and control strategies, and relevant regional guidelines.

Through the training, the airports will be able to develop their own staff training and surveillance regimes.

As a result, surveillance capacities will be strengthened, early-warning systems improved and public health responses at airports better coordinated.

"These trainings are implemented at a critical point in time, before international travel picks up again," Regine Hess, the German ambassador to Tanzania, said.

The first training was conducted at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya on May 26, followed by Moi International Airport in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa.

Training has also been conducted at Juba International Airport in South Sudan and now training is ongoing at Tanzania's international airports.

Human mobility across countries, largely driven by air travel, has been one of the main vectors that facilitated the rapid spread of coronavirus across the world, and many of the confirmed cases in the EAC region also have had a history of air travel.

The EAC member states include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.