This was said in Morogoro region recently by researchers and scientists from Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa and UK, who are meeting in the region to strategize scientific ways of preventing the diseases from animals to human being and vice versa.
Citing an example of lift valley disease, a lecturer of Sokoine University of agriculture, Gerald Msinzo said that researchers were working on several samples from animals, testing them in laboratories so that the results would be used to establish practical solutions for the diseases.
For his part, a researcher, Jo Lines of UK, explained that so far significant progress has been made in malaria which is one of the area of research.
He said that other diseases such as Ebola were also been worked on, and that he was optimistic that the research findings would bear desired fruits.
Dalie Wesseles, a researcher from South Africa was on the view that there was a need to train focal points in different parts of the region and set up guiding principles on how best they can deal with the diseases.
Livestock constitutes an important natural resource of the Southern African Region, with over 60 percent of the region’s total land area suitable for livestock farming.
Although the livestock sector offers the region a unique opportunity for accelerated economic growth in the region, in some areas, diversification and increased poor animal disease control and husbandry, are turning the opportunities into threats.
Furthermore, couple of years ago World Bank (WB) released a statement that controlling communicable diseases in today’s globalized world is an essential priority for all countries, which have seen how tuberculosis, SARS, or influenza can now spread across continents with daunting speed.
From a sudden powerful outbreak of a new strain of influenza to the intermittent resurgence of old enemies such as tuberculosis or polio, communicable diseases in the 21st century have one thing in common—they move just as quickly as people do.
To tackle them successfully, public health authorities now require access to information on diseases and their patterns of movement that is accurate, reliable, and in real time.
East Africa, with its rapidly integrating economic community, is no exception. The good news is that the region is proactively preparing for the public health challenges that may stem from increased labor mobility and greater contact between countries and with the world at large.
The WB statement said that four nations Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda have begun a major effort to coordinate surveillance of communicable diseases.
They are establishing a regional network of public laboratories that will improve access to high-quality diagnostic services among vulnerable populations living in the cross-border areas of all four countries. The network will share information on diseases quickly and will investigate disease outbreaks cooperatively.
Historically, laboratories have been one of the weakest links in Sub-Saharan Africa’s health systems, seriously hindering each country’s ability to confirm and respond in a coordinated way to outbreaks of disease.
The US$63.7 million East Africa Laboratory Networking Project (financed by the World Bank; coordinated by the East, Central, Southern Africa Health Community, ECSA-HC, in collaboration with the East African Community; and prepared with support from United States Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the United States Agency for International Development and the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease) is addressing common challenges facing the four countries.
The challenges are inadequate laboratory infrastructure and supply of trained staff, as well as outdated manual information systems that do little for efficient decision-making.
Today, each of the four countries is taking the lead on a different aspect of the laboratory network, with potential savings for all. Kenya, for instance, is leading on integrated disease surveillance and response, and on operational research.
Ends.
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