Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to be set up in Africa
Thulani Gqirana, News24 | 07 October, 2015 07:26

Establishing Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Africa will ensure the continent is not caught by surprise with an outbreak such as Ebola.

This is according to South African health minister Aaron Motsoaledi, who was speaking at the conclusion of the second Ministerial Forum of China-Africa Health Development in Cape Town on Tuesday.

Announcing a health cooperation agreement between Africa and China, the two health ministers, Motsoaledi and Lin Bin, said they realised the importance of establishing a resilient health system in Africa, which would include the creation of the CDC.

Motsoaledi said the CDC was to ensure they were not caught napping by another disease.

“We don’t want to wait for another disaster. So a CDC is going to be a form of surveillance, which will help us. It’s going to be Africa’s intelligence centre. The CDC will work as an intelligence centre for diseases, to tell us that if we don’t watch out, this is likely to happen.

“With the CDC, we as African countries will know what is about to happen. Unlike what happened with Ebola. We were caught napping there.”

He said there would be a main CDC in the continent, and then there would be regional ones.

“African countries are divided into regions and each one will have a centre … Usually you choose countries which have laboratories which are regarded as World Health Organisation [WHO] collaborating centres. Those are the type of laboratories that are recognised by WHO [to be] of particular excellence.”