By Abujah Racheal
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has called for a global pandemic agreement to protect African sovereignty and ensure equitable access to vaccines and diagnostics.
Prof. Yap Boum, Deputy Incident Manager at the Incident Management Support Team of the Africa CDC, disclosed this during a virtual press briefing on Thursday.
Boun said that Africa CDC had been convening health ministers and experts to press for legal frameworks that guarantee populations who contribute to clinical trials are not sidelined when medical countermeasures become available.
He said that Africa must strengthen local vaccine and medical manufacturing capacity to avoid the inequities seen during COVID-19 and now with the Mpox vaccine.
On data management, Boun said that Africa CDC was standardising emergency data collection through the DHIS2 tracker to ensure that African-generated data remains on the continent.
Reacting to a recent false Ebola alarm in Nigeria, he said that the case, in which a patient travelled from Rwanda and passed through multiple checkpoints before testing negative in Lagos, highlighted weaknesses in cross-border collaboration.
According to him, Africa CDC is working on innovations, including digital platforms and artificial intelligence, to improve surveillance and screening at points of entry.
He also said that Africa CDC was co-leading the Incident Management Support Consortium (IMSC) with 28 partners to coordinate interventions on vaccines, oral cholera doses, water, sanitation and hygiene measures.
“Africa must speak with one voice, strengthen sovereignty, and ensure that our people are not left behind in future health emergencies,” he said.
The concern comes just days after a 32-year-old male estate developer, who travelled from Rwanda, triggered a false Ebola alarm in Abuja.
The patient was admitted to Nisa Premier Hospital with fever, nose bleeding and bloody stool.
Tests by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC),however, confirmed that he was negative for viral haemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola and Marburg.
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