Geneva — The Africa Centres for Illness Management and Prevention (Africa CDC) has entered right into a strategic partnership with Texas Youngsters’s International Well being Community to scale up efforts in stopping and controlling non-communicable and uncared for tropical childhood ailments throughout Africa.
Signed on the margins of the World Well being Meeting, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) represents a major step in Africa’s push to enhance baby well being outcomes and construct resilient, self-reliant well being techniques.
Texas Youngsters’s International Well being Community, the worldwide well being arm of Texas Youngsters’s Hospital – one of many largest and most revered kids’s hospitals in the US in collaboration with Baylor Faculty of Medication, strengthens maternal and baby well being in over a dozen international locations.
Texas Youngsters’s Middle for Vaccine Improvement is globally recognised for innovating vaccines for rising epidemics and uncared for tropical ailments similar to hookworm and schistosomiasis. The centre innovated the patent-free COVID vaccine expertise that reached 100 million folks as Corbevax in India and IndoVac, one of many first and solely Halal COVID vaccines, in Indonesia.
“This partnership marks a major milestone in our mission to make sure that each African baby has entry to life-saving well being interventions,” stated Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-Normal of Africa CDC. “It displays our New Public Well being Order by investing in sturdy establishments, native management, and a talented well being workforce to deal with at the moment’s and tomorrow’s well being threats.”
The collaboration with Africa CDC will initially give attention to the management of sickle cell illness (SCD). Africa bears the brunt of SCD, comprising 85% of the worldwide burden. By a collectively developed motion plan, Africa CDC and Texas Youngsters’s International will combine a vital SCD care bundle, specifically, toddler screening, vaccination, penicillin prophylaxis, and hydroxyurea remedy into main well being providers throughout endemic international locations.
The initiative, known as ‘A New Day for Youngsters with Sickle Cell Illness’, is galvanising international and native stakeholders, coaching main well being staff, stimulating and shaping markets for SCD commodities, and deploying digital expertise to facilitate SCD care.
“Right this moment is a momentous event as a result of after 1000’s of years of youngsters enduring unspeakable ache and dying from sickle cell illness, the leaders of public well being in Africa are deploying an African resolution to an African drawback,” stated Dr Joseph Lubega, a paediatric haematologist at Texas Youngsters’s and chief of this SCD initiative.
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The collaboration will set up a vaccine analysis fellowship for African scientists, advance joint vaccine growth, and mobilise high-level advocacy to assist SCD management and broader baby well being insurance policies.
“Youngsters and households are on the coronary heart of all the things we do, whether or not in Houston or throughout the globe,” stated Dan DiPrisco, President of Texas Youngsters’s International Well being Community, on the occasion in Geneva. “This partnership deepens our shared dedication to strengthening healthcare capability and experience inside native communities.”
The partnership exemplifies Africa CDC’s dedication to respectful, action-oriented collaborations rooted in African management. It straight helps the aims of the Africa CDC Strategic Plan 2023-2027 and contributes to long-term efforts by African Union Member States to cut back baby mortality, enhance well being fairness, and foster innovation throughout public well being techniques.
About Africa CDC
The Africa Centres for Illness Management and Prevention (Africa CDC) is the autonomous continental public well being company of the African Union, mandated to assist Member States in strengthening well being techniques, and enhancing illness surveillance, prevention, and emergency response capabilities. Be taught extra at: http://www.africacdc.org and join with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Fb and YouTube
