Africa, hot bed for emerging infectious diseases, says don

Principal Investigator, Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET), Prof. Akin Abayomi, yesterday described Africa as a hot bed for emerging infectious diseases due to lack of research funds and human capacity development

Speaking at the ‘African Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases and Bio Security’ in Lagos, he said the governments do not spend enough money on resources for medical research and development, making the continent the idle breeding ground for most emergent infectious diseases.

According to him, a significant degree of research and development funds and resources come from outside Africa, stressing that the situation needs to be reversed. Abayomi noted that government needs to support the indigenous healthcare and tertiary academic units so that the country would not be caught unawares like the case of Ebola.

The theme of the conference was “Strengthening African Health System-Building Resilience and Capacity to Tackle Epidemic Threats: Bio-security and Infrastructure in the Aftermath of the Ebola Outbreak.”

Abayomi maintained that governments must channel available research funding through indigenous research entities in the various universities such that they can disseminate findings and resources among local researchers who would then collaborate with international partners on a level footing.

“At the moment we are beggars and we are not on a level footing with other continents because these foreign donors dictate the tune to proffer solutions to our local problems,” the don stated.