School of Clinical Medicine

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Browsing School of Clinical Medicine by Subject "Africa"

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    PublicationOpen Access
    COVID-19 vaccinology landscape in Africa
    (Frontiers, 2022-12-05) Baptista, Sara; Gitaka, Jesse; Kano, iBernard N.; Mbaebie Blessing Oyedemi; Enany, Shymaa; Naidoo, Sanushka; Suliman, Sara; Nepolo, Emmanuel
    More than two years after the start of COVID-19 pandemic, Africa still lags behind in terms vaccine distribution. This highlights the predicament of Africa in terms of vaccine development, deployment, and sustainability, not only for COVID-19, but for other major infectious diseases that plague the continent. This opinion discusses the challenges Africa faces in its race to vaccinate its people, and offers recommendations on the way forward. Specifically, to get out of the ongoing vaccine shortage trap, Africa needs to diversify investment not only to COVID-19 but also other diseases that burden the population. The continent needs to increase its capacity to acquire vaccines more equitably, improve access to technologies to enable local manufacture of vaccines, increase awareness on vaccines both in rural and urban areas to significantly reduce disease incidence of COVID-19 and as well as other prevalent diseases on the African continent such as HIV and TB. Such efforts will go a long way to reduce the disease burden in Africa.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    COVID-19: Are Africa’s diagnostic challenges blunting response effectiveness?
    (Open Research Africa, 2020-04-17) Kobia, Francis; Gitaka, Jesse
    Since its emergence in Wuhan, China in December 2019, novel Coronavirus disease - 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread worldwide, achieving pandemic status on 11th March, 2020. As of 1st April 2020, COVID-19, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), had infected over 800,000 people and caused over 40,000 deaths in 205 countries and territories. COVID-19 has had its heaviest toll on Europe, United States and China. As of 1stof April 2020, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa was relatively low, with the highest number registered by South Africa, which had reported 1,380 confirmed cases. On the same date (also the date of this review), Africa had reported 5,999 confirmed cases, of which 3,838 (almost 65%) occurred in South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, with the remaining 2,071 cases distributed unevenly across the other African countries. We speculate that while African nations are currently experiencing much lower rates of COVID-19 relative to other continents, their significantly lower testing rates may grossly underestimate incidence rates. Failure to grasp the true picture may mean crucial windows of opportunity shut unutilized, while limited resources are not deployed to maximum effect. In the absence of extensive testing data, an overestimation of spread may lead to disproportionate measures being taken, causing avoidable strain on livelihoods and economies. Here, based on the African situation, we discuss COVID-19 diagnostic challenges and how they may blunt responses.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Malaria vaccine approachesleveraging technologiesoptimized in the COVID-19 era
    (Frontiers, 2022-09-08) Kanoi,Bernard N; Likhovole, Clement; Maina, Michael; Kobia, Francis M; Gitaka, Jesse
    Africa bears the greatest burden of malaria with more than 200 million clinicalcases and more than 600,000 deaths in 2020 alone. While malaria-associateddeaths dropped steadily until 2015, the decline started to falter after 2016,highlighting the need for novel potent tools in thefight against malaria.Currently available tools, such as antimalarial drugs and insecticides arethreatened by development of resistance by the parasite and the mosquito.The WHO has recently approved RTS,S as thefirst malaria vaccine for publichealth use. However, because the RTS,S vaccine has an efficacy of only 36% inyoung children, there is need for more efficacious vaccines. Indeed, based onthe global goal of licensing a malaria vaccine with at least 75% efficacy by 2030,RTS,S is unlikely to be sufficient alone. However, recent years have seentremendous progress in vaccine development. Although the COVID-19pandemic impacted malaria control, the rapid progress in research towardsthe development of COVID-19 vaccines indicate that harnessing funds andtechnological advances can remarkably expedite vaccine development. In thisreview, we highlight and discuss current and prospective trends in global effortsto discover and develop malaria vaccines through leveraging mRNA vaccineplatforms and other systems optimized during COVID-19 vaccine studies.