Diagnostics in Focus: Accelerating Access for Priority Diseases in Africa
A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 545
Special Issue Editors
Interests: diagnostic development; evaluation; regulation; policy development; uptake
Interests: molecular diagnostics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Africa CDC has published a list of priority epidemic-prone diseases in Africa. Any of the pathogens can cause epidemics or pandemics. Diagnostics are crucial in the preparedness and response for outbreaks. There is limited availability and accessibility of diagnostics for Africa priority diseases. This poses a huge challenge to make diagnostic tests available within 100 days of an outbreak.
Africa CDC has identified the top five priority pathogens that cause frequent outbreaks in the continent. These include dengue, cholera, mpox, measles and bacterial meningitis. To ensure diagnostics are available for these pathogens, there is need to establish mechanisms that can reduce bottlenecks and accelerate the introduction of diagnostics for use in public health systems
The Africa CDC Diagnostic Advisory Committee (DAC) was established as a continental mechanism to accelerate diagnostics by facilitating the development, evaluation, regulatory harmonization, policy development and uptake by countries. The DAC produces a list of diagnostic tests that can be considered for evaluation, regulatory harmonization and eventual uptake and use in countries. The development of this list requires a systematic process of reviewing the literature and conducting stakeholder engagement.
In this series, we present the priority listing of diagnostic tests for the top five epidemic prone diseases and outline key considerations to facilitate the development, evaluation, registration and uptake of the tools by African countries.
Prof. Dr. Rosanna Peeling
Dr. Debi Boeras
Dr. Nicaise Ndembi
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- diagnostics
- epidemic-prone diseases
- outbreak preparedness and response
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