African scientists seek to collate data that decode diseases, a big step for science on the continent

Outbreaks of infectious diseases in African countries are quite common. While Ebola hits the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda with sporadic outbreaks, the Marburg virus causes concern in Equatorial Guinea in 2023, as cases of cholera, malaria and tuberculosis are diagnosed among different African nations.

Diseases do not respect borders established by humans, warns the World Health Organization (WHO). In this context, it is essential that scientists in Africa are able to generate and share critical data on disease-causing agents in time to inform public health decisions.

According to the WHO, genomic sequencing technologies are powerful tools in this type of work. With the aim of strengthening and expanding genomic surveillance in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a new strategy in 2022.

The method allows scientists to decode the genetic material of harmful microorganisms and create biological “fingerprints” to investigate and track the causes of these diseases. This information helps in the development of diagnostic methods, treatments and possible vaccines. It also helps public health authorities guide and prepare their health systems for effective outbreak detection and response.

Dealing with infectious diseases across countries and continents requires many complex, overlapping, and broad interventions. One is a common repository where countries, public health authorities and their scientists can share information about diseases and associated microorganisms. They can then collaborate around shared data. These types of platforms exist in many high-income countries. But the African region lags behind.

However, this scenario may change. In a new publication in Nature Medicine, researchers describe the work being done to create such a repository for the African continent.

Africa accounts for most of the estimated 10 million deaths caused globally each year by infectious diseases.

These diseases also hold back the continent’s development ambitions: according to a WHO report, they represent an estimated annual loss of productivity of US$800 billion.

These numbers underscore the urgency of improving the scientific response to infectious disease.

There are some green shoots. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown what African institutions are capable of. The Centers for Disease Control Africa (CDC Africa), through the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative, oversaw the training of hundreds of laboratory staff.

DNA sequencing machines and essential laboratory supplies – like reagents, the chemical cocktails that make the tests possible – have been deployed. Today, public health laboratories in many African countries, with varying levels of capacity, can generate their own genome sequences of pathogens.

So the data is not the problem. The questions are: what will happen to them? How and where will it be secured and by whom? Will it be, as has been the custom until now, “exported” and intellectual property moved abroad?

Global data sharing platforms have played a significant role in the scientific use of data. However, issues of transparency and governance are being raised by the global community.

Since 2020, the Africa CDC, in collaboration with the African Society of Laboratory Medicine, the South African National Institute of Bioinformatics and several public health institutions across Africa, has been working to develop a continental platform for data management and sharing. genomics of microorganisms. Innovation and technological development involves industry and other partners.

Developing such a platform is not just a technical exercise. An ecosystem must be created for its adoption. It is therefore being built in parallel with an Africa CDC-led consultation with its member states, to refine data sharing agreements between countries and support national data governance frameworks.

pillars

The platform rests on six pillars.

The first pillar is adoption and change management . Regional organizations – those that have driven investment in training and infrastructure during the pandemic – must drive the development of necessary policies, processes and system changes across the continent.

Second, the platform must offer a good user experience that allows for seamless and cost-effective data collection and timely sharing and use of data across Africa.

Third, we need data services and products to facilitate the sharing of data and information with decision makers who are not scientists or geneticists.

Fourthly, it is necessary standardized and consistent data management processes, practices, tools and controls about how data is processed, stored, shared and deployed in all countries and contexts.

A core infrastructure is the fifth pillar: the technical side of the platform must be composed of application and infrastructure components that can be quickly reconfigured for contexts and diseases.

And finally, one good program management and sustainable resources will be fundamental.

As argued in the article, managing and analyzing data to support data-driven decision-making in public health is a global imperative. It requires ongoing engagement with international disease surveillance stakeholders and technology platform developers.

The human and resource costs of uncontrolled disease in Africa were pointed out. If there is to be a collective response to Africa’s disease burden – and it is an enormous task – a shared pathogen genomic data platform would be a crucial step in sustaining these efforts.

An African-owned and African-led data-sharing platform will be critical for the timely sharing of locally produced information to inform rapid outbreak response. It will also be a critical step towards an equitable mechanism to maximize the value and usefulness of pathogen genetic data for national, regional and global health security.