ECDC Head of Emergency Preparedness and Response visits Africa CDC
The Head of ECDC's Emergency Preparedness and Response section, Thomas Hofmann, visited Africa CDC on 25 and 26 of April to meet Dr. Merawi Aragaw, Head of Surveillance, and other experts involved in the ECDC4AfricaCDC project.
The opportunity allowed meetings with the Partnerships Unit and various Heads of Division to discuss current plans and future collaboration beyond the current project. Besides planned activities, such as joint workshops and trainings, discussions looked at how both organisations can work together in a more integrated way in the area of preparedness and response to advance their strategic priorities.
Exchanging experiences with procedures and conducting joint activities of the rapid response teams from both organisations was identified as a potential area of collaboration. An ad hoc meeting was dedicated to a second round of risk ranking where the main objectives were:
- to identify priority epidemic-prone diseases for effective emergency preparedness planning;
- to inform prioritisation of public health actions for prevention, early detection, and rapid response;
- to contribute towards research, development, and innovation prioritisation.
Africa CDC also presented the current mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A coordinating role was assigned to Africa CDC during the High-Level Emergency Regional Meeting “United in the Fight Against MPOX in Africa” in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 13 April 2024.
There was an agreement to explore ways of potential collaboration and ECDC support in this area. At the end of the visit, Thomas Hofmann was guided through the laboratory and afterwards discussed the role of laboratories for research in the early phases of outbreaks with Dr Yenew Kebede Tebeje Head, Division of Laboratory Systems & Networks.
