RFP No. ASLM/ACDC/AGARI/01/28/25
CLOSING DATE: 14 FEBRUARY 2025
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INTRODUCTION
The African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) is a Pan‐African professional body, working to advocate for the critical role and needs of laboratory medicine and networks throughout Africa. For more information, please visit our website at https://aslm.org.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is the autonomous Health Agency of the African Union (AU) that supports Member States in their efforts to strengthen their health systems. Africa CDC was officially launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 31, 2017, and is guided by the principles of leadership, credibility, and ownership, and delegated authority, timely dissemination of information, transparency, accountability, and value addition. The Africa CDC is Africa’s first continent-wide public health agency and envisions a safer, healthier, integrated, and stronger Africa, where Member States are capable of effectively responding to outbreaks of infectious diseases and other public health threats. For more information, please visit: https://africacdc.org/
OBJECTIVE OF THE ASSIGNMENT | SCOPE OF WORK | EXPECTED DELIVERABLES
Infectious diseases pose a significant threat to health especially in Africa and further augmented by an unpredictable rise in emerging and re-emerging infections. Overall, more than 140 disease outbreaks are reported annually within the African continent. Notwithstanding the current COVID-19 pandemic, Africa has grappled with multiple Ebolavirus (EBV), Marburg, Mpox, and other epidemics. Furthermore, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to further result in millions of deaths, a hard-to-treat infections, and increased burden to health-care systems.
High-income countries have incorporated the use of genomics data for disease surveillance systems allowing for timely and in-depth pathogen characterization leading to targeted effective control of disease threats. On the other hand, routine genomic data use in Africa is limited but during the past 36 months the ASLM and Africa CDC and other partners such as WHO, Global Fund and other philanthropic and private sectors have equipped key public health institutions with NGS equipment and accompanying resources to strengthen COVID-19 surveillance. These efforts form part of the distributed genomics surveillance network across Africa. However, the anticipated increase of genomics data is not accompanied by adequate data management and data exchange infrastructure in-country or on the continent. This is the challenge that this application seeks to address.