The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has commended Equatorial Guinea’s milestone in malaria control, highlighting broader continental advances in disease surveillance, outbreak response, and local manufacturing of essential health commodities.

Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, disclosed this during a weekly high-level regional press briefing on Thursday, outlining progress in malaria elimination, emergency preparedness, and institutional reforms across member states.

Mr Kaseya said children under five and pregnant women remained most affected by malaria, which accounted for 95 per cent of global cases and 96 per cent of related deaths recorded worldwide.

He described Equatorial Guinea’s malaria response as a pilot model for elimination that other African countries could replicate, noting that sustained political commitment and targeted interventions were critical to progress.

“Only nine countries out of 55 in Africa are malaria-free. Equatorial Guinea is on track to become the next,” he said, underscoring the country’s steady advances toward elimination status.

He warned that drug and insecticide resistance, alongside climate change, were expanding malaria transmission zones, threatening recent gains and complicating efforts to reduce infections and deaths continent-wide.

The director-general reported that Africa CDC had significantly strengthened outbreak detection and response capacities through expanded surveillance systems, improved coordination mechanisms, and enhanced technical support to member states.

“Public Health Emergency Operations Centres increased from five in 2022 to 32 in 2025, while laboratory networks and pathogen genomic capacity have improved dramatically. As a result, reported outbreaks dropped from 189 in early 2025 to 72 in 2026,” he added.

He attributed the decline to faster detection and coordinated regional responses.

Mr Kaseya said funding utilisation at Africa CDC rose from 34 per cent in 2022 to 95 per cent, while overall funding increased from $52 million to $463 million.

He said human resources were expanded and repurposed rather than reduced, with deliberate attention to gender balance and equitable geographic representation across the institution’s workforce and leadership structures.

Mr Kaseya said the African Union recently endorsed the Africa Executive Sovereignty agenda, replacing the “new public health order” framework that has guided the continent’s health security reforms.

Mr Kaseya announced plans for an extraordinary summit on local manufacturing in Nairobi in May 2026 and the Conference on Public Health in Africa in Ethiopia in November 2026.

He said Africa CDC also planned to establish an African medical prize, starting in 2027, to recognise outstanding contributions by African scientists advancing medicine and public health innovation.

He highlighted recent outbreak responses, including Uganda’s anthrax outbreak, where Africa CDC supplied 10,000 vaccine doses, and cholera outbreaks in Mozambique, Somalia, and Zambia, worsened by flooding.

Mr Kaseya stressed the importance of Africa producing its own vaccines and diagnostics to reduce reliance on external suppliers and strengthen the continent’s long-term health security.

Equatorial Guinea’s health minister joined the briefing, outlining how the country analysed malaria trends, implemented pilot interventions, and scaled elimination efforts.

(NAN)