Dr Ahmed Ogwell Ouma is the new Deputy Director General of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. He sat with Right for Education (R: Ed) to discuss his responsibilities and the measures Africa CDC is putting in place to ensure Africa achieves its dream of a quality health care system.
R: Ed: Congratulations on your promotion, sir. Could you elaborate on your responsibilities as the Deputy Director General of Africa CDC?
Dr Ahmed: Basically, I am in charge of program delivery for health institutions in Africa
R: Ed: What measures are being implemented to ensure African countries have quality health care systems?
Dr Ahmed: When it comes to our healthcare systems, they are three things we need to address. Firstly, prioritising our health care services on the continent. As a continent, we must give rapt attention to our Health care services; procedures must be laid down to ensure quality healthcare service is provided to all.
Also, we must get our health workers to the top of leadership. They have to be well trained and deployed where they can fully unleash their potential to help the African population.
Finally, we must ensure that health workers have the tools to tackle healthcare system issues. Among those tools, we have health facilities, medication and consumables.
R: Ed: Regarding pandemics, COVID-19 was a huge threat to Most African countries; this may be attributed to a Lack of preparedness. How best is Africa preparing/ prepared to face any other pandemic in future?
Dr Ahmed: The Africa CDC did an amazing job during covid-19 pandemic. We were able to manage and reduce the cases in African countries. To become prepared for pandemics in the future, 5 pillars are needed to be addressed effectively:
First of all, we need to strengthen institutions at the national, regional, continental and international levels. Those institutions will be able to respond quickly to pandemics before it gets to the emergency level.
Secondly, we must train health workers who can quickly identify any trait of a virus or pandemic and act fast before it escalates.
Also, it is expedient for us to manufacture our own health products. During the pandemic, we discovered that only 1% of medicines and health materials were provided by Africa. We need to manufacture our own products in our companies.
In addition, we must provide domestic resources that we can use quickly to respond to such situations to support the local resources made available by various African countries.
Finally, we must reinforce partnerships in two aspects. It should be action-oriented, partners should be able to address a specific issue within the pandemic, and they must respect the priority of Africa and what we are fighting to achieve.
All these pillars will help Africa better prepare for future pandemics if well addressed.
R: Ed: Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat, killing at least 1.27 million people worldwide and associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019. How best is Africa handling this increasing threat?
Dr Ahmed: Antimicrobial resistance is a huge crisis in Africa, and it is increasing rapidly because people failed to understand its burden in Africa. The Africa CDC has defined the various ways to address this issue.
Primarily, we must reinforce countries’ capacity building to detect, prevent, control and respond quickly and effectively to this crisis. This goes by:
- Strengthening the network of laboratories in countries for improved disease detection and rapid response.
- Provide consumables and ask laboratories to survey and care for people with such cases.
In addition, we must train people who can tackle the crisis to ensure that any person is not laid behind and receive the proper treatment.
With this in place, we can develop the right strategies to address this issue and bring good results because it is a silent crisis, and we need to bring it up.
R: Ed: There has been an increasing level of self-medication in Africa without prescription from a registered medical practitioner; this has caused a lot of toxicity and potential causes of Antimicrobial resistance. How best is Africa addressing this problem?
Dr Ahmed: When it comes to the issue of Self – Medication, Africa CDC is engaged in 3 levels
- Raise awareness among the public to make them understand that medicines are useful when used correctly and can put life in danger when it’s not the case.
- Understanding the pattern of this issue, knowing its burden and the gap will help propagate it to the mass, which will help them understand the importance of desisting from self-medication.
- Support Governments to implement appropriate policies to help tackle the issue of self-medication. Because in some countries, there’s a lack of policies about it and the countries with such policies do not implement them well. As a consequence, people endanger themselves. It is important to implement the right policies to fight this issue.
R: Ed: According to Global HIV/AIDS infection statistics, Africa has the highest rank; how best can this problem be addressed?
Dr Ahmed: 2030 is approaching; we still have 6 to 7 years to address the issue and control HIV/AIDS in all African countries.
Africa CDC is working on two points:
- Implementation of agencies that will advocate and consider HIV as an emergency in Africa to address it in a coordinated manner.
- Advocate the use of domestic resources because local resources will lower cases by 2030.
R: Ed: Education is a major part of health care, for example, how one can wash the hands properly to prevent some bacteria from entering the body. How is Africa CDC communicating the best health behaviour?
Africa CDC is committed to promoting the best health behaviour in Africa.
We do this at the level of Intergovernmental institutions by:
- Supporting governments to build up strategies and plans to promote best health behaviour.
- Provide information, education and design programs that are required.
We also work with the youth, the workers and the education sectors to provide information to reach the communities we can’t penetrate. The Africa CDC believes that when people have the right information, they can manage issues well.
In addition, we support members to work with groups which will be able to address issues.
R: Ed: In the last 10 years, R: Ed has reached over 1 billion people in Africa with our digital learning context. We have made a significant impact with our articles on Health and Medicine in Africa. How can our Mass communication platform support your work?
Dr Ahmed: Right for Education Africa is already doing a great job with its initiative of virtually educating and raising awareness of certain diseases and health behaviours. However, you can support us by sharing the works of Africa CDC with your community. You must give the right information to the right audience; for example, target youth if it is a health situation regarding youth. Let’s go constituency by constituency, and we will have good results.
Co author: Rosaline Lalhensia Ngassama
