A Stellenbosch University-led consortium has been handed a R101m grant to manage future epidemics on the continent, the only African-led project among five international awards from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP3).
The grant comes five months after the university launched a state-of-the-art biomedical research institute, reports News24.
At the time of the launch, renowned scientist Tulio de Oliveira, a professor of bioinformatics at the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking at the university, said the country was in the age of epidemics, and it was going to be “an armed race between humans and pathogens”.
De Oliviera said the grant was awarded for a project called Genomic Surveillance to Control Pathogen Infections in Africa (GenPath Africa).
“GenPath Africa’s overall goal will be to control pathogen infections on the continent – to enhance genomic surveillance capacity, strengthen genomic sequencing and provide training in advanced analysis and interpretation in southern and eastern Africa.”
The consortium would include epidemiologists, clinicians, bio-informaticians, immunologists and virologists to increase the use of genomic epidemiology in tackling public health issues like HIV, TV and antimicrobial resistance in SA, Kenya and Mozambique.
“Despite the rapid expansion of genomic sequencing capacity and increased genomic surveillance during the pandemic, the global response to SARS-CoV-2 illuminated the barriers preventing the world from having readily available, reliable and comprehensive genomic data to assist public health decision-making,” he said.
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