Epidemic preparedness and response in the Africa region

Following a series of epidemics that occurred in the 1995-96 period in several countries in West and Central Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) and the USAID Bureau for Africa, Office of Sustainable Development (AFR/SD), decided to stengthen their cooperation on epidemic preparedness and response (EPR) throughout the continent. Many African countries lack drugs and other supplies for prompt and effective interventions to address epidemic outbreaks. Many country official lack both awareness of the risk of epidemics and the capacity to effectively detect and manage them. In order to improve the situation, WHO/AFRO defined five groups of countries with similar epidemiological profiles, and created a political framework to facilitate inter-country collaboration within each of these epidemiological blocks. The Swiss Disaster Relief (SDR), the European Union (EU) and the U.S.Centers for Desease Control and Prevention (CDC) also joined the effort to strengthen capacity for EPR in West Africa. Almost 4 years later, AFRO and AFR/SD decided to organize a review and documentation of the epidemic preparedness and response program. The present summary report contains the findings and reconmmendations of this review. The report presents the epidemiological block approach used by WHO/AFRO to implement its EMC programs, and discusses the performance of the epidemiological teams in the West Africa Block (WAB) and Great Lakes Block (GLB).