Lagos government, others hold summit on infectious diseases

The Lagos State government, in collaboration with three organisations, will today begin an African conference on emerging infectious diseases and bio-security in Lagos.

The organisations are Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET); West African Task Force for Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Disease Outbreaks (WATER); and African Gong and the Global Partnership Programme (GPP), Canada.

Themed: “Strengthening African Health Systems- Building Resilience and Capacity to Tackle Epidemic Threats: Bio-security and Infrastructure in the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak,” the summit will be attended by policy makers, scientists, health care professionals, emerging diseases survivors, especially Ebola survivors, development partners and opinion leaders across the continent.

According to a statement, the conference, which is now in its second edition, is a brainchild of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) that ravaged the West African sub region in 2014, killing 11,324 out of the infected 28,645 in the process, a figure that represents 39.5% case fatality rate as recorded by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The first edition held in Dakar, Senegal in 2015 was attended by over five countries, and representative of various health organisations across the continent.

Today’s conference has other sub-themes as; Era of Emerging infectious Diseases (EID) and the aftermath of the Ebola outbreak; Bio-Security and Bio-banking; Public Learning and Understanding of Science (PLUS); and Forum to discuss an Ebola vaccine Strategy.

Disclosing the aim of the second edition, Lagos State Health Commissioner, Jide Idris, said in a statement that it is being organised to “consolidate the gains of the first conference, review the status of implementation of the resolutions, chart the way forward for prevention and control of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and bring the issue of bio-security to the front burner.”

According to Idris, “it is intended to help develop the continent’s own strategic intervention and response mechanisms to increasing outbreak of EID and biological terrorism threats.” He said “these home-grown responses will be aligned with the evolving Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and the ‘One Health’ paradigms envisioned by WHO, among others.”