Communicable diseases remain the commonest health condition which high prevalence and burden resulting in huge social, economic and quality of life losses in the WHO African Region. Malaria, Tuberculosis, AIDS and Meningitis are still killing millions of people each year. Cholera has become endemic in most countries in the continent. Wild polio virus is being reintroduced in countries where polio had disappeared for more than 3 years. Despite success against measles mortality, this disease continues to kill in many districts. So is neonatal tetanus.

Strengthening disease surveillance capacity makes countries better identify disease prevention priorities, plan for the best possible health of their populations, sensitize beneficiaries, focus evidence based interventions that work and monitor the trends to show impact as well as to detect issues to address. Countries of the WHO African Region have since 1998 unanimously adopted the integrated disease surveillance (IDS) strategy . To date 43 countries out of 46 are using the IDSR strategy. They have also endorsed the International health regulations (2005) and decided to meet its requirements using the IDSR strategy and process. The IHR (2005) implies a paradigm shift, calling for the broadening of the scope of surveillance beyond disease situation and trends; it also calls for event-based surveillance at all levels and moving away from pre-set to adapted control measures.

The key challenges member states face include:

• Scaling up IDS and IHR (2005) implementation to cover all levels of the health system including the communities and health facilities.
• Establishing Communicable Disease coordination mechanism
• Integrating the IHR (2005) and non communicable diseases into the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response technical guidelines and training material
• Building human laboratory and strengthening collaboration with other labs which analyse chemical, radio nuclear substances according to requirements by IHR (2005)
• Mobilizing adequate resources and sustaining ongoing efforts and commitment of partners
• Too few African countries have begun implementing the International Health Regulations [IHR]
• Strengthening of laboratory capacity and networking at the regional, sub-regional and epidemiological bloc levels;
• Strengthening Community based surveillance
• Organizing multiple programme specific training courses for the same health personnel, particularly at district level;
• Enhancing in- and pre-service training on IDSR including IHR considering the high staff turnover and attrition at all levels of the health systems.

Programme Manager

Dr Francis Kasolo
Tel.: +47241 39983
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