The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is a specialized technical institution of the African Union that support Member States in their efforts to strengthen their health systems. Africa CDC was officially launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 31, 2017 as the 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. The agency mission is to strengthen Africa’s public health institutions’ capabilities and capacity to detect and respond quickly and effectively to disease outbreaks and other health burdens through an integrated network of continent-wide preparedness and response, surveillance, laboratory, and research programs.
Towards meeting its mission, the Africa CDC works with African Union Member States, World Health Organization (WHO) and partners in the five geographic sub-regions of Africa to strengthen their capacity in five strategic priority areas:
- Surveillance and disease intelligence;
- Emergency preparedness and response;Laboratory systems and networks;Information and technology systems; and
- Institutes and research.
The Africa CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response Division is mandated to support member states in emergency preparedness relating to IHR-2005 core capacity strengthening, to respond to public health emergency timely and effectively. Hence it’s responsible for capacity building of member states on risk assessment and hazard mapping, planning to prepare for and detect early and respond rapidly for any public health events across different administrative levels.
As such, Africa CDC is in a process of developing a continental multi-hazard and multi-sectoral emergency preparedness plan (MHMSEPRP) which will serve as guidance document for African Union Member States to develop their emergency preparedness and response plans. As a first step towards this exercise, a prioritization/risk ranking of epidemic-prone disease in Africa was conducted to inform Africa CDC strategic planning and help effective resource allocation to manage prevention/mitigation and response actions to health emergencies. To build on what was done, there is a need to map major threats and hazards on the continent that happened during the past twenty years.
To respond to the call by the African Union for a consultancy services to conduct a continental study on Mapping Major Threats and Hazards on the Continent as Inputs for Development of an Atlas, a first version of this inception report based on the contract signed between AU and the consultant was submit to Africa CDC on September 30, 2022. It was agreed to discuss on the desk review before submission in person in Addis-Abeba from November 22 to December 2nd, 2022. By discussing by the team and the Head of EPR Division, the methodology used was not aligned with the current vision of the scope and work. This new inception report will also provide some elements for contract amendments.
However, this Inception Report provides the current understanding of the task, the general objectives of the study, specific aims and methodology to gather and analyze data and map priority Threats and Hazards. By listing the specific deliverables of the consultancy, the Inception Report further suggests a plan of activities with a timeline leading to the completion of the consultancy.