GHID's Adobasom-Anane discusses pandemic prevention on African Health Check

Africa has experienced a slew of health issues, including noncommunicable diseases, infectious diseases, and the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to rage, claiming lives and destroying livelihoods.

Nonetheless, the pandemic forced the scientific community into action as the world frantically sought containment, treatment, and preventive measures. Not even our own African continent would be spared.

The world's response to the COVID-19 epidemic has, once again, made clear the flaws and disparities in the global health ecosystem. Health Security is one such.?

Episode eighteen of the Africa Health Check hosted by Gogontlejang GG Phaladi Morokotso on CNBC Africa and sponsored by the Mastercard Foundation featured Austin Gideon Adobasom-Anane , a Research and PhD Fellow with the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Group (GHID-KCCR) at the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) as he speaks on African Health security, Lessons from COVID 19.

Austin shared, “Health security deals with the ability of a nation to prevent, detect, and respond to public health threats. When looking at health security in Africa, in the face of COVID-19, it has always been a challenge.

“One of the ways to monitor the interventions we put in place is to reach out and engage various stakeholders. A collaboration between research, academia, healthcare, policymakers, and even the private sector would go a long way to strengthen our healthcare system.”

“Being prepared enough and having the capacity to respond in such a way that if such an event comes up its effect on the health care system can be minimized,” he added.

Austin highlighted one of his projects on the Rights-Based Approach to Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture to Improve Household Food Security in the Ahafo Region of Ghana.

“The Objective of the project was to make sure that we are able to link agriculture and nutrition in terms of health, to be able to improve household food security.

“While food processors process foods from the agriculture sector, the nutrition officers encourage the people to utilize these foods to improve health, especially in vulnerable groups such as those under 5, lactating mothers, and pregnant women.”

Austin Gideon Adobasom-Anane advised that research proposals should be relevant and specific to the targeted community to ensure greater success in implementation.

“In proposal writing, I believe that it must be locally relevant and locally acceptable and it must be adapted to the peculiar situations of the targeted community because the fact that it worked in community “A” doesn’t necessarily mean it will work in that format in community “B”.

“We need to be sensitive to these principles when writing proposals and implementing our projects to enable sustained development in our communities.”

“Collaborative effort is vital. It is important that initiatives we come up with in terms of food security, infection prevention, and control of emerging pathogens are addressed collaboratively,” Austin Gideon Adobasom-Anane concluded.

The episode also featured Dr. Marianne Mureithi from the Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Nairobi, and Rev Anthony Acheampong, Pharmacist and Pastor at World Harvest Church Ghana.

Dr. Mureithi spoke of the contribution of Mastercard Foundation and Africa CDC towards great African-driven initiatives that are contributing to the global agenda of health security. One such initiative to boost disease surveillance and emergency response capacity in Africa is the African Pathogen Genomics which she happens to be involved in.

“There are initiatives like the African Pathogen Genomics, where we want to be at the forefront of detecting any new pathogens and quickly generating a genetic sequence because there is a scientist seated somewhere in Seattle who can quickly take that sequence and start formulating a vaccine.

“As I mentioned, we are a global village, so having that initiative being African-driven, we can start sequencing some of our pathogens for the first time. There is monkeypox, Lassa fever and we need to be on top of these genetic codes so a vaccine can be made very quickly in case of an outbreak,” she explained.