Kenya Hosts Key Forum on Disease Surveillance and Public Health

Kenya is hosting a pivotal forum on disease surveillance and public health, as the African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) Steering Committee meeting convenes in Mombasa from September 12 to 13, 2024. The meeting, aimed at advancing health product safety and fostering collaborative efforts across the continent, reflects Africa’s growing commitment to enhancing public health systems and safeguarding its populations.

The AU-3S initiative, launched in early 2020 under the auspices of the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to bolster safety surveillance systems across Africa. Initially involving five founding countries—Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa—the initiative has since expanded to include seven additional nations: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. This expansion highlights a collective commitment to improving health safety across the continent.

During the ongoing forum, Health Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa emphasized the continued challenges posed by communicable diseases, both established and emergent. In her speech, delivered on her behalf by Sultan Matendechero, the acting Director General of Public Health and Professional Standards, Barasa called for African countries to draw lessons from past pandemics like Covid-19 and the Mpox virus. She underscored the necessity of closely monitoring the safety and efficacy of interventions deployed to combat such diseases.

The forum brings together heads of African national regulatory agencies, senior officials from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the US FDA, and AUDA-NEPAD. The presence of these key stakeholders underscores the collaborative spirit driving the AU-3S initiative and its mission to enhance health product safety through improved surveillance and regulatory practices.

One of the notable achievements of the AU-3S initiative is the enhancement of Kenya’s Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) in reporting adverse events following Covid-19 vaccination. The PPB has significantly improved its data collection capabilities and reporting rates through the acquisition of advanced equipment and routine capacity building of healthcare providers. This progress reflects the initiative’s success in strengthening safety surveillance systems and ensuring timely and accurate monitoring of health interventions.

In addition to the improvements in safety surveillance, the PPB has also developed and gazetted legal provisions on Pharmacovigilance (PV/PMS rules, 2022), aligning with WHO maturity level 3 standards. These regulations support the implementation of pharmacovigilance activities, contributing to a more robust and responsive safety surveillance system.

The meeting serves as a critical platform for discussing ongoing challenges and strategizing future efforts to enhance disease surveillance and health product safety. It also highlights the importance of international cooperation and knowledge sharing in addressing public health issues.

In her speech, Barasa expressed anticipation for continued support in strengthening health product monitoring and regulatory decision-making. She emphasized the importance of acquiring data collection equipment for active safety surveillance of Covid-19 vaccines and improving regulatory practices through joint signal management.

Overall, the AU-3S Steering Committee meeting in Mombasa represents a significant milestone in Africa’s efforts to advance public health safety and disease surveillance. The forum’s focus on collaborative efforts, regulatory improvements, and enhanced surveillance systems reflects a unified commitment to safeguarding the health of Africa’s populations and addressing future public health challenges with greater efficacy and resilience.