THE East African Community (EAC) is on course to engage its partner states and international stakeholders on key health interventions to guarantee quality health to the people.
On disease prevention and control, the
bloc is addressing key strategic interventions in establishing a
regional information exchange system for communicable and
non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and a regional reference public health
laboratory and strengthening national public health laboratories.
The Head of Corporate Communications and
Public Affairs, Mr Owora Othieno said here that further measures would
be taken to strengthen preventive, curative and rehabilitative health
services, in addition to strengthening capacity of the partner states in
diagnosing and treating both communicable and NCDs.
To improve interventions, Mr Othieno
said the Disease Prevention and Control Unit was implementing two major
projects, namely, the East African Public Health Laboratory Networking
Project (EAPHLNP) and the East African Integrated Disease Surveillance
Network (EAIDSNet).
The EAPHLNP is a World Bank-funded
project being implemented by the EAC partner states in collaboration
with the EAC Secretariat, the East, Central and Southern Africa Health
Community, the US Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the
World Health Organisation (WHO).
The project seeks to establish a network
of efficient, high quality, accessible public health laboratories for
the diagnosis and surveillance of TB and other communicable diseases.
The project supports 25 satellite laboratories within East Africa,
laboratories that have been selected by the EAC member states based on
their proximity to or location in border areas that are known to have
large numbers of vulnerable populations, including migrants and or
refugees; high risk of disease outbreaks and are predominant with
indigenous populations.
Mr Othieno also disclosed that the
EAPHLNP aims to achieve enhanced access to diagnostic services for
vulnerable groups to contain the spread of diseases in the border areas;
improved capacity to provide specialised diagnostic services and
conducting drug resistance monitoring at regional level; improved
capacity for disease surveillance and emergency preparedness efforts
through availability of timely laboratory data to provide early warning
of public health events and establish a platform for conducting training
and research.
EAIDSNet is a regional collaborative
initiative of the national ministries of the EAC partner states
responsible for human and animal health in collaboration with the
national health research and academic institutions.
EAIDSNet was formed in response to a
growing frequency of cross-border malaria outbreaks in the 1990s and a
growing recognition that fragmented disease interventions, coupled with
weak laboratory capacity, were making it difficult to respond in timely
manner to the outbreaks of malaria and other infectious diseases.
Since its revival in 2000, the EAC
partner states, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation,
established EAIDSNet in the same year to develop and strengthen the
communication channels necessary for integrated cross-border disease
surveillance and control efforts.
Its major accomplishments include the
establishment of a department of Health within the EAC Secretariat to
support a regional health agenda; successfull completion of a regional
field simulation exercise in pandemic influenza preparedness and
piloting a web-based portal for linking animal and human health disease
surveillance.
The strategic direction of EAIDSNet was
shaped, in part, by lessons learned following a visit to the more
established Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS) regional network.
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