The African Union (AU) has elevated the status of its health agency – the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) – to an autonomous health agency.
The decision was taken at the just concluded 35th ordinary session of the assembly of heads of state and government of the continental body in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The decision means that the Africa CDC now has full powers to operate autonomously. It specifically means that it will now have the legal, institutional, and operational autonomy to mobilise its needed resources to adequately respond to the continent’s needs in terms of disease prevention and control.
Africa CDC Director, Dr John Nkengasong, welcomed the news via a post on Twitter, describing the development as a “historic decision.”
“Until now, Africa CDC was a specialized technical institution. It will now be elevated into a full public health agency for the continent, which will be more or less autonomous,” Dr Nkengasong was quoted telling the Health Policy Watch, an independent global health reporting platform, following the announcement.
Before now the Africa CDC operated under the African Union Commission’s department for Social Affairs, which officials running it said made it difficult to make decisions if there was a need for an urgent response to an emergency.
Henceforth, the agency will also report directly to Heads of State of AU Member States, which Dr Nkengasong said signaled the growing member states’ commitment to strengthening the continent’s response to current and future disease outbreaks.
This development, he added, is as a result of African leaders’ renewed perception of disease as a security threat for the continent, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, among other disease trends.
“They want to have full, timely access to anything that happens within the continent so that they can provide policy guidance. So I think that is extremely encouraging,” he stated.
With this development, health experts say the Africa CDC will be in a better position to strengthen national health systems in Africa, which effort began with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, with training and building capacity with the goal of improving the calibre of public health assets and personnel in member countries.
The decision by the heads of state also means that the AU will now fund Africa CDC as an independent entity and the position of director will be upgraded to that of director-general, the same level as a Commissioner.
Africa CDC is a specialised technical institution of the AU established to offer coordinated support to public health initiatives of member states and to strengthen the capacity of their public health institutions to detect, prevent, control, and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats.
The agency was established in 2017, after the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic that sickened nearly 30, 000 people and claimed the lives of over 11,000.
That epidemic highlighted the need for a continental body dedicated to prevention, surveillance and response to disease outbreaks on the continent.
The agency has been instrumental in coordinating the continent’s response to Covid-19, thereby helping in mobilization of resources in the form of medical supplies, and training of personnel in member states.
In Sierra Leone, the Africa CDC has intervened since its formation, from provision of vaccination against the Ebola virus to ongoing vaccination against Covid-19. It has also help provide training and capacity building for the country’s response to the pandemic and various other priority diseases under the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.
