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A New Deal: Building a strong, efficient, and reliable Africa CDC

CONTEXT:

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa significantly reduced maternal and child mortality, thanks to high-level commitment from governments, increased health financing, and innovations in programming and technology. Despite this remarkable progress, Africa was unable to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 by 2015, due to the high burden of communicable diseases, the rapid increase in non-communicable diseases and various disease outbreaks.

By 2050, Africa will have 2.5 billion people. To accelerate development of African countries, the African Union’s (AU’s) 2063 Agenda prioritizes meeting the health needs of Africans. However, the stagnation of growth at 3.5% in 2022 – due to hyperinflation caused by the Ukrainian conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic – is already forcing states to reduce their health budgets, with high risk to reverse the gains made during the past decade and achieving neither the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 nor the AU’s 2063 Agenda.

Every year, Africa records more than 100 public health emergencies (measles, cholera, yellow fever, Ebola, meningitis…). These emergencies interrupt the provision of basic health services, with considerable socioeconomic consequences for poor populations. The recurrence of such disease outbreaks is a consequence of weak health systems characterized by insufficient planning, financing, qualified human resources and essential commodities to respond to emergencies.

Following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2013, political and public health actors agreed on the urgency to put in place an African institution that could strengthen the capacity of AU Member States to detect, prevent, control, and respond efficiently and effectively to epidemics. It is in this context that the Africa CDC was established. The aim was to support Member States to prevent and respond to epidemics, control other diseases, and strengthen advocacy for investment to maintain adequate funding for their health systems.

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