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Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to incorporate pathogen genomics for enhanced disease surveillance and outbreak management in Africa. The genomics of SARS-CoV-2 has been instrumental to the timely development of diagnostics and vaccines and in elucidating transmission dynamics...

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Autores principales: Inzaule, Seth C, Tessema, Sofonias K, Kebede, Yenew, Ogwell Ouma, Ahmed E, Nkengasong, John N
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906676/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33587898
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30939-7
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author Inzaule, Seth C
Tessema, Sofonias K
Kebede, Yenew
Ogwell Ouma, Ahmed E
Nkengasong, John N
author_facet Inzaule, Seth C
Tessema, Sofonias K
Kebede, Yenew
Ogwell Ouma, Ahmed E
Nkengasong, John N
author_sort Inzaule, Seth C
collection PubMed
description The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to incorporate pathogen genomics for enhanced disease surveillance and outbreak management in Africa. The genomics of SARS-CoV-2 has been instrumental to the timely development of diagnostics and vaccines and in elucidating transmission dynamics. Global disease control programmes, including those for tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, foodborne pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance, also recommend genomics-based surveillance as an integral strategy towards control and elimination of these diseases. Despite the potential benefits, capacity remains low for many public health programmes in Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to reassess and strengthen surveillance systems and potentially integrate emerging technologies for preparedness of future epidemics and control of endemic diseases. We discuss opportunities and challenges for integrating pathogen genomics into public health surveillance systems in Africa. Improving accessibility through the creation of functional continent-wide networks, building multipathogen sequencing cores, training a critical mass of local experts, development of standards and policies to facilitate best practices for data sharing, and establishing a community of practice of genomics experts are all needed to use genomics for improved disease surveillance in Africa. Coordination and leadership are also crucial, which the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention seeks to provide through its institute for pathogen genomics.
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spelling pubmed-79066762021-02-26 Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges Inzaule, Seth C Tessema, Sofonias K Kebede, Yenew Ogwell Ouma, Ahmed E Nkengasong, John N Lancet Infect Dis Personal View The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to incorporate pathogen genomics for enhanced disease surveillance and outbreak management in Africa. The genomics of SARS-CoV-2 has been instrumental to the timely development of diagnostics and vaccines and in elucidating transmission dynamics. Global disease control programmes, including those for tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, foodborne pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance, also recommend genomics-based surveillance as an integral strategy towards control and elimination of these diseases. Despite the potential benefits, capacity remains low for many public health programmes in Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to reassess and strengthen surveillance systems and potentially integrate emerging technologies for preparedness of future epidemics and control of endemic diseases. We discuss opportunities and challenges for integrating pathogen genomics into public health surveillance systems in Africa. Improving accessibility through the creation of functional continent-wide networks, building multipathogen sequencing cores, training a critical mass of local experts, development of standards and policies to facilitate best practices for data sharing, and establishing a community of practice of genomics experts are all needed to use genomics for improved disease surveillance in Africa. Coordination and leadership are also crucial, which the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention seeks to provide through its institute for pathogen genomics. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-09 2021-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7906676/ /pubmed/33587898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30939-7 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Personal View
Inzaule, Seth C
Tessema, Sofonias K
Kebede, Yenew
Ogwell Ouma, Ahmed E
Nkengasong, John N
Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title_full Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title_fullStr Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title_full_unstemmed Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title_short Genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in Africa: opportunities and challenges
title_sort genomic-informed pathogen surveillance in africa: opportunities and challenges
topic Personal View
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906676/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33587898
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30939-7
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