Five Portuguese-speaking African countries have developed national roadmaps to establish and strengthen emergency medical teams capable of rapid deployment during disease outbreaks, disasters and other health emergencies.
Representatives from Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe drew up the plans during the first regional Emergency Medical Team (EMT) workshop tailored specifically for Portuguese-speaking African nations. The meeting was organised by the World Health Organization (WHO) with support from the Government of China and the Macao Special Administrative Region.
WHO specialists worked with country delegations to assess existing capacities, identify operational gaps and define priority actions for building trained, equipped and coordinated national teams. The resulting roadmaps outline responsibilities and actions for the next 12 to 24 months, providing a foundation for sustained national action, continued WHO technical support and measurable progress towards operational readiness.
The workshop addressed a longstanding gap in access to specialised emergency preparedness and response capacity-building opportunities tailored to the Portuguese-speaking context in Africa. Participants focused on governance, recruitment, training, logistics, deployment and after-deployment learning, in line with WHO’s ten-step pathway for EMT development.
The initiative supports implementation of the Regional Framework on Emergency Medical Teams, 2026–2030, adopted by African health ministers at the 76th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in August 2026. The framework calls for every country in the region to have at least one functional national EMT by 2030, marking a shift from relying on ad hoc teams assembled during crises to maintaining permanent national capacities that are trained, tested and ready to deploy.
Under the framework, countries are expected to anchor EMTs within ministries of health, national public health institutes, emergency operations centres and incident management systems. By 2028, at least 80% of member states should have governance mechanisms and integrated teams, while by 2030 every country should have at least one operational team, with at least 80% validated or classified against WHO standards.
Across the WHO African Region, 27 countries are developing national EMTs, but only a handful have so far achieved operational readiness in line with WHO minimum standards. Ethiopia recently became the first civilian EMT in the region to achieve WHO verification, while Senegal has a classified military EMT. Uganda has expanded its roster to nearly 350 trained members, and Cameroon has moved from planning to training its first 80-member multidisciplinary team.
For the five Lusophone countries, the new roadmaps are a first concrete step towards joining this group, ensuring that when the next outbreak or disaster strikes, national teams are ready to respond quickly and effectively.
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