Anna Mia Ekström, invited as advisor to the Africa CDC Research Workshop
In November, Anna Mia Ekström was invited as one of the few external advisors to the Africa CDC’s Continental Research Prioritization Framework Workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The workshop aimed to validate a comprehensive set of tools and frameworks designed to enhance health research, identify priority diseases, map research capacities, establish ethical guidelines, and improve governance and coordination of health research across Africa.
Africa CDC was created after the large Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 2014/2015. The backdrop of the current meeting is the identified necessity to take a stronger lead in combatting the multiple health challenges that Africa is facing in particular the burden of multiple ongoing infectious outbreaks, the latest being the mpox a public health emergency of international concern, that Africa CDC announced followed by the WHO on 14 August 2024.
Africa CDC has declared a bold goal to produce 60% of the vaccines it needs by 2040, a necessity given the repeated failure by high-income countries to equitably share vaccines according to need both during Covid19 and now for mpox.