His institution, Stellenbosch University, has also invested heavily, including the Biomedical Research Institute (BMRI) building, which houses 1000 scientists, 26 BSL-3 labs, and Africa’s largest biorepository. Building data science capacity has been a key priority, alongside multiple training initiatives and fellowship schemes. By teaming up with bodies such as WHO and Africa CDC on initiatives such as the Pathogen Genomics Initiative, the goal has been to share knowledge and expertise across Africa.
The climate dimension
Professor de Oliviera has also launched a multidisciplinary climate initiative, CLIMADE – an African-led venture to detect, track and prevent outbreaks and pandemics. More than 50% of pathogens have the potential to cause more outbreaks because of climate change, emphasising the key need for such an initiative.
Examples of its work include:
- The characterisation of a new variant of chikungunya virus, which arose in Africa and is beginning to spread globally. With the variant having sparked an outbreak in Reunion, Professor de Oliviera’s team worked with health officials and academics in nearby Mauritius to characterise its introduction and spread in near real time.
- Work on Rift Valley fever virus (RFV) in Kenya, creating a new genomic surveillance system and lineage classification system. Genomic knowledge was used to identify sequences coding for RFV’s spike-like protein (GnGc), which are forming the core of a new mRNA vaccine being developed at the mRNA vaccine hub in South Africa.
- In Togo, a new lineage of dengue virus was identified. Multiple types of data were integrated to generate risk maps for its spread, and successfully predicted what actually happened. The genomic analysis also suggested that the variant originated in East Africa and had spread cryptically before being identified in Togo.
Professor de Oliviera emphasised how all this work was led from the South and was being driven by local researchers. Rather than local researchers sending samples to South Africa, he insists that they come to his institute to learn new techniques and carry out the analyses themselves.
He also highlighted how much of his team’s work is based on partnerships, sharing and strengthening collective efforts to address local challenges – particularly to expand the use of advanced technologies such as genomics, mRNA vaccines, AI and data science.
While “going fast and far” has been a theme of the Forum, he highlighted another relevant Africa proverb: A stick on its own is fragile, but sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.
Climate changes and emerging infectious diseases
Following Professor de Oliviera’s inspiring presentation, Dr Neeraj Mistry (Future Africa Institute, South Africa) chaired a wide-ranging discussion with an interdisciplinary panel of experts:
- Dr Fortunate Machingura (Centre for Sexual Health and HIV AIDS Research (CeSHHAR), Zimbabwe).
- Dr IIesh Jani (Instituto Nacional de Saude, Mozambique).
- Dr Sokhna Thiam (West Africa Regional Office (WARO), Senegal).
- Dr Umar Ibrahim (Federal University, Nigeria).
The discussions highlighted some of the complexities associated with the field of climate change of health. While climate change is already affecting health, there are limited data on specific impacts, and a need to capture these impacts more systematically in more settings. It was suggested that existing widely used platforms, such as DHIS2, could be leveraged to capture more data on impacts.
Climate impacts on health are many and varied, and derive from the interaction between multiple climatic and environmental factors. It was emphasised that multisectoral and multidisciplinary efforts were needed to understand and address climate impacts. This raises many challenges, including the different conceptualisations and terminologies used in different fields and the difficulties in integrating different perspectives. It also creates profound governance challenges, at all levels from the local to the continental.
One suggestion made was to draw on the lessons from history. It was argued that much could be learned from the multisectoral efforts that underpinned a revolution in HIV care in Africa.
A further key theme was the need to engage with communities. Communities are most affected by climate change and hold local knowledge on how climate risks can be mitigated. It was suggested that indigenous knowledge needs to be respected and ways found to integrate it with the results of more formal scientific studies.
Communities can also contribute to surveillance, highlighted as a key need to track the changes in infectious disease being driven by climate change. Mozambique, for example, has created a National Health Observatory that integrates multiple data sources to provide an early warning of impending outbreaks.
Ultimately, health systems will need to adapt to a new reality. New technology and service delivery models may help to mitigate impacts, and engaging communities so that they can contribute to bottom-up solutions were seen as promising avenues to explore.
With populations already feeling the impacts of climate change, these efforts need to start now.