George Sie Williams

Biographic Data

ID7774452
NAMEGeorge Sie Williams
GIVEN NAMESGeorge Sie
FAMILY NAMEWilliams
SIGNATUREWILLIAMS G S
AFFILIATIONSWorld Health Organization Regional Office for Africa
ORCID0000-0001-7764-0629
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS6
TOTAL CITATIONS0
AUTHOR COUNT6
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2022
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX0

  • Event-based surveillance in the WHO African region

    Open AccessOpeayo Ogundiran, George Sie Williams et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Public Health2026

    Event-based surveillance (EBS) is a critical component of epidemic intelligence, supporting the timely detection of unusual public health events. However, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the status of EBS implementation across the WHO African region was not well documented. This study establishes a regional baseline of EBS modalities in place before the pandemic to inform future surveillance system evaluation and strengthening. We conducted a cro…

  • Assessing the utility of the Covid-19 epidemic Situations of Concern classification system in guiding operational responses to the pandemic in the WHO African region

    Open AccessOpeayo Ogundiran, Jessica L Abbate et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Public Health2025

    During a public health emergency, early implementation of response activities is crucial for saving lives and protecting livelihoods. The COVID-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, posed a global public health crisis that required timely decision-making despite limited data and capacity. In this context, WHO’s Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) developed the Situations of Concern (SOC) classification syst…

  • Evaluation of the epidemic intelligence from open sources (Eios) system for the early detection of outbreaks and health emergencies in the African region

    Open AccessGeorge Sie Williams, Etien Luc Koua et al.ARTICLEBMC Public Health2025

    We conclude that the EIOS system performed well in detecting public health events in the African region early. However, some improvements are needed. We recommend increasing social media and local community radio sources on the EIOS system

  • Disseminating information on acute public health events globally

    Open AccessHarsh Lata, Neil J Saad et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2024

    WHO works, on a daily basis, with countries globally to detect, prepare for and respond to acute public health events. A vital component of a health response is the dissemination of accurate, reliable and authoritative information. The Disease Outbreak News (DON) reports are a key mechanism through which WHO communicates on acute public health events to the public. The decision to produce a DON report is taken on a case-by-case basis after evalua…

  • Trends in public health emergencies in the WHO African Region

    Open AccessEtien Luc Koua, Jobert Richie Nansseu Njingang et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2023

    The African Region reports the heaviest burden of public health emergencies globally. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of public health events data collected the past 22 years in the WHO Africa region, to explore patterns and trends that can inform public health strategies, policy changes and develop appropriate tools to improve disease surveillance, preparedness and response to public health emergencies. A suite of exploratory data an…

  • Covid-19 pandemic in Africa’s island nations during the first 9 months

    Open AccessTimokleia Kousi, Daniela Vivacqua et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2022

    The geographic and economic characteristics unique to island nations create a different set of conditions for, and responses to, the spread of a pandemic compared with those of mainland countries. Here, we aimed to describe the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the potential conditions and responses affecting variation in the burden of infections and severe disease burden, across the six island nations of the WHO’s Africa region…