On 17 August 2026, a high-powered delegation from the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Nigeria Country Team and US Program Office paid a courtesy visit to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), where discussions centered on surveillance, laboratory capacity, and the use of mortality data to guide health decisions in Nigeria.

The delegation was led by Dr. Cynthia Whitney, MD, MPH, Executive Director and Principal Investigator of CHAMPS, and included Rosie Henson, Chief of Staff; Prof. Martin Meremikwu, Principal Investigator and Site Director for CHAMPS Cross River; Prof. Muhammad Bashir Faruk, Principal Investigator and Site Director for CHAMPS Bauchi; and other members of the US Program Office and site leadership.

The team was received by Dr. Jide Idris, MBBS, MD, MPH, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the NCDC. It used the occasion to share updates on the progress of the Nigeria program to date, along with a preview of activities planned for the coming period.

Welcoming the delegation, Dr. Idris described the program’s presence in Nigeria as timely, noting that CHAMPS’ methods align closely with approaches the NCDC has been considering and hopes to expand. He stressed the importance of keeping data in-country, and of thoughtful, deliberate community involvement and engagement in surveillance work.

He also highlighted the capacity the agency has already built, pointing in particular to two national reference laboratories equipped for genomic sequencing.

In response, Dr. Whitney offered CHAMPS’ laboratory capacity in support of the NCDC’s existing infrastructure and expressed the program’s interest in sharing its data with the agency to inform decision-making on health priorities.

Dr. Fatima Saleh, Director of the Surveillance and Epidemiology Department, welcomed the prospect of collaboration and proposed exploring a memorandum of understanding between the CHAMPS sites and the NCDC — a step that would formalize the working relationship and set out how data, laboratory resources, and technical expertise might be shared.