Africa is the continent worst affected by disease outbreaks, registering a 40% rise between 2022 and 2024. However, the establishment of the Continental Surveillance Advisory Group (CSAG) is expected to be a game-changer, enhancing disease forecasting, monitoring, identification and reporting – ultimately strengthening Africa’s overall disease surveillance capabilities.
The CSAG’s creation was a key outcome of a meeting organised by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), bringing together surveillance directors from 47 African Union Member States.
The meeting led to the identification of priority pathogens for the Africa CDC indicator-based surveillance of notifiable diseases, including emerging and re-emerging diseases like mpox and cholera, as well as other diseases targeted for eradication. It also resulted in the development of a roadmap to strengthen indicator-based surveillance at Africa CDC.
These initiatives support Africa CDC’s core mandate to monitor public health events across the continent, driving informed and timely public health actions. They also represent a significant step in evolving the institution’s surveillance system, focusing on proactive surveillance, intelligence gathering and early warning systems – key elements in its five-year strategic roadmap.
The CSAG will play a crucial technical role in guiding Africa CDC’s development and implementation of enhanced and context-driven surveillance strategies.
Africa CDC has spearheaded an event-based surveillance system on the continent, and over 22 countries have supported and endorsed the system. While event-based surveillance has achieved positive results, case-based and indicator-based systems remain underdeveloped at the continental level, highlighting the critical need for a more integrated and resilient surveillance infrastructure.
“Data quality, timeliness and completeness remain major challenges in Africa, posing serious limitations to countries and regional institutions to make better analyses or informed decisions and to allocate resources,” said Dr Merawi Aragaw, head of the Surveillance and Disease Intelligence division at Africa CDC.
To address these challenges, efforts are underway to strengthen surveillance systems at all levels. This includes coordination, digital health strategies, health information exchange guidelines and standards, monitoring, evaluation and leveraging data for targeted public health actions and optimised resource allocation.
Dr Allan Muruta, the newly elected CSAG chairperson and Commissioner of Integrated Epidemiology, Surveillance and Public Health Emergencies for Uganda, emphasised the importance of collaboration. “During my term, advocating for the implementation of surveillance standards and advancing digitalisation and health information exchange will be central to our efforts in fostering a healthy and prosperous Africa,” he said.
Africa CDC will continue collaborating with surveillance experts across the continent and the CSAG to develop a strategic framework that guides improvements in indicator-based surveillance.
