Health experts say Africa’s response to future disease outbreaks will depend on stronger community-based health systems.
This emerged at the 26th International AIDS Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
HIV Vaccines Product Development Team Lead at International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Dr Vincent Muturi-Kioi, says the response to HIV, that has been spanned over decades, has provided valuable lessons that can be applied to managing Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases.
“African countries are experiencing more and more outbreaks of these emerging infectious diseases. We need to be better prepared with counter measures vaccines and drugs in countries that are able to respond much faster to prevent these outbreaks from getting large and out of control. For diseases like Ebola, having stockpiles in the countries which are at risk for these outbreaks to occur – and vaccinating health workers in advance with vaccines that have been tested – could enable us to see much better outcomes.”
