The West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana has hosted the 2nd Annual General meeting of the Tackling Infections to Benefit Africa (TIBA) from September 16 -18, 2019. The meeting which took place at the Fiesta Royale Hotel, Accra, was to explore and benchmark best practices from different African health systems in tackling infectious diseases and to improve the management and treatment of endemic and epidemic infectious diseases.
In his welcome address Rev. Prof. Patrick F. Ayeh-Kumi, Provost, College of Health Sciences, stated that Ghana like many other middle-income countries has many health and developmental challenges over its young course of socio-economic transformation. He said the emergence and re-emergence of communicable and non-communicable diseases has necessitated the need for alertness to Ghana’s surroundings and the robustness of the health system.
He noted that, in a quest to prevent and control diseases, Africans unfortunately are constrained by challenges such as inadequate training and financial resources, breakdown in health systems, poor surveillance, poor environmental sanitation, ineffective treatment options and inadequate infrastructure and tools.
Rev. Prof. Patrick F. Ayeh-Kumi, Provost, College of Health Sciences
He mentioned that research was central to the University of Ghana’s transformation process, which ultimately results in strengthening its impact and visibility internationally, hence the University’s vision statement: ‘To be a World Class Research Intensive University over the next decade’.
Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary-General of the African Research University Alliance (ARUA) and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana spoke on “Building research partnerships in African Universities.” He said globalization, internalization and technological changes are factors that have led to the recent global trends in Higher Education. Prof. Aryeetey emphasised that African Universities must wake-up to the reality that technology impacts research, adding that Universities must make use of the technologies available in order to preserve knowledge while finding solutions to the myriad of various challenges in the world. He outlined challenges such as high graduate unemployment, brain drain, low I.C.T. utilization, ageing faculty and deteriorating infrastructure as factors affecting the cause of promoting positive developmental research.
He explained that the African Research University Alliance (ARUA) brings together sixteen (16) of the region’s best universities to deal with the challenges mentioned above in a collaborative manner. According to Prof. Aryeetey, ARUA is poised to making a difference in the higher education landscape in Africa by establishing thirteen (13) Centres of Excellence.
Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary-General of ARUA
Prof. Fred Newton Binka, Vice-Chancellor, University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), who was the Keynote Speaker, said the need for political commitment towards the eradication of malaria was necessary. According to Prof. Binka, increasing domestic resources, forming of national malaria elimination taskforce, development of a five-year malaria elimination action plan, costing, finance outlay with agreed and realistic timelines and the availability of a web-based malaria data system could help eradicate malaria by 2050.
Prof. Mark Woolhouse, Director of TIBA in an address, spoke on TIBA’s achievements and outlined its plans which he indicated includes eradicating infectious diseases like malaria as well as putting the right measures and vaccines in place.
Prof. Mark Woolhouse, Director of TIBA
