West African Scientists Urge Stronger Outbreak Detection as Health Systems Weaken
Laboratory scientists from West Africa meeting in Lome, Togo, called on governments to invest in disease detection and diagnostic capacity, warning that health systems are weakening.
Laboratory scientists from across West Africa have called on governments to reinforce the region's ability to detect disease outbreaks, warning that health systems are losing strength and could be caught off guard by the next epidemic.
The appeal came in Lome, Togo's capital, where the scientists have spent the week examining how prepared the region is for outbreaks and how heavily it still depends on vaccines supplied by Western countries.
They said governments must work together to improve disease detection and put money into diagnostic capacity, drawing on the region's experience of Ebola and COVID-19 over the past decade.
Between 2014 and 2016, an Ebola outbreak killed at least 11,000 people across West Africa, with the overwhelming majority of deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
"We need to anticipate these outbreaks," said Kossi Kabo, head of the Association of Medical Biologists of Togo and a co-chair of the congress. "We shouldn't wait for an epidemic to emerge somewhere before responding. By then, it would be too late."
The wider continent remains vulnerable. In Congo, the rare Bundibugyo virus has killed more than 3,600 people among nearly 7,500 cases since mid-May, when Congolese authorities announced a fresh deadly Ebola outbreak. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the true tolls are likely three times the official figures, and that the outbreak is already the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history. The virus circulated undetected for several weeks. Separately, Hantavirus was detected on a cruise ship that docked in the Atlantic off Cape Verde in May.
Scientists are concerned that without a major outbreak threatening the region, upkeep of health systems has slipped, leaving them ill-prepared for future epidemics.
Arthur Bodurie Calvin Garber, president of the Sierra Leone Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists, said governments must invest in people as much as in infrastructure.