Is Africa prepared for tackling the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic. Lessons from past outbreaks, ongoing pan-African public health efforts, and implications for the future

Abstract

An important need remains for ensuring long-term sustainability of what is being built. Africa needs to continue its upward trajectory of activities so as to align public health resources, scientific expertise and experience, and political commitment so that any future infectious disease outbreaks can be stopped before they become an epidemic in Africa. Africa needs more investments into ONE-HEALTH collaborative activities across the continent in order to meet the challenges of current and future public health threats (Kock et al., 2020; Petersen et al., 2019; Talisuna et al., 2020; Hui et al., 2020; Zumla et al., 2016). A whole new young generationof enthusiastic, committed and dedicated African public health workers, epidemiologists, researchers, healthcare workers and laboratory personnel have emerged over the past 5 years, and they need to be supported by security of funding to build their careers and sustain their capabilities to take forward their research and training portfolios. The future of Africa’s public health security relies on them. Increased governmental and donor investments are required to advance locally led, world-class public health work with surveillance, data and analytics capabilities and further expanding state-of-the-artlaboratory capacities with more trained personnel to sustain capacity to rapidly respond to outbreaks at their source. A well-planned long-term strategy from the Africa Union will add major value for consolidating African leadership of public health capacity building, training and research