How does the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) contribute to the evidence based decision-making and practice during COVID-19 pandemic in ECOWAS region?

Sombié, Issiaka; Johnson, Ermel; Lokossou, Virgil; Amouh, Tete Sitou; Sow, Abdourahmane; Ogbureke, Nanlop; Okolo, Stanley

doi:10.11604/pamj.supp.2020.37.1.25625

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Eight articles were eligible for full-text screening. They were from the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region 15 , the ECOWAS region 16 , New Zealand 31 , Hungary 32 , Canada 33 , Nigeria 14 , and two had Global representation 27 34 . All the articles gave descriptive reports on how modelling evidence on COVID-19 was shared with policymakers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We found few studies that explicitly described knowledge translation strategies and how they were used to promote the uptake of modelling evidence for policy decision-making during the pandemic, and most of them were from higher-income settings [14][15][16] . LMICs may have had limited modelling and knowledge translation capacity pre-pandemic, and this may have hindered rapid decision-making during the pandemic 17 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lessons Learned From Covid-19 Modelling Efforts for Policy Decision-Making in Lower- And Middle-Income Countries

Owek,

Guleid,

Maluni

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic had devastating health and socio-economic effects, partly due to mitigating policy choices. There is little evidence of approaches that guided policy decisions in settings that had limited modelling capacity pre-pandemic. We sought to identify knowledge translation mechanisms, enabling factors, and structures needed to translate modelled evidence to policy decisions effectively. Methods We utilised convergent mixed methods in a participatory action approach, with quantitative data from a survey and qualitative data from a scoping review, in-depth interviews, and workshop notes. Participants included researchers and policy actors involved in COVID-19 evidence generation and decision-making. They were mostly from lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Quantitative and qualitative data integration occurred during data analysis through triangulation and during reporting in a narrative synthesis. Results We engaged 147 researchers and 57 policy actors from 28 countries. We found that the strategies required to use modelling evidence effectively include capacity building of modelling expertise and communication, improved data infrastructure, sustained funding, and dedicated knowledge translation platforms. The common knowledge translation mechanisms used during the pandemic included policy briefs, face-to-face debriefings, and dashboards. Some enabling factors for knowledge translation comprised solid relationships and open communication between researchers and policymakers, credibility of researchers, co-production of policy questions, and embedding researchers in policymaking spaces. Barriers included competition among modellers, negative attitude of policymakers towards research, political influences and demand for quick outputs. Conclusion Our findings led to the co-development of a knowledge translation framework useful in various settings to guide decision-making, especially for public health emergencies. Furthermore, we provide a contextualised understanding of knowledge translation for LMICs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we share key lessons on how knowledge translation from mathematical modelling complements the broader learning agenda related to pandemic preparedness and long-term investments in evidence-to-policy translation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons Learned From Covid-19 Modelling Efforts for Policy Decision-Making in Lower- And Middle-Income Countries

Owek,

Guleid,

Maluni

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on MENA, impacting health care systems, economies, and social well-being. Although the region fared better in disease burden than several others, many countries in the region continue to face challenges due to limited economic and health care resources [ 48 , 106 - 108 ]. Although COVID-19 continues to circulate in MENA, the rate of transmission remained well below the threshold of an outbreak for over 1 year ahead of the WHO declaration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Updated Surveillance Metrics and History of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020-2023) in the Middle East and North Africa: Longitudinal Trend Analysis

Soetikno,

Lundberg,

Ozer

et al. 2024

JMIR Public Health Surveill

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Background This study updates the COVID-19 pandemic surveillance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) we first conducted in 2020 with 2 additional years of data for the region. Objective The objective of this study is to determine whether the MENA region meets the criteria for moving from a pandemic to endemic. In doing so, this study considers pandemic trends, dynamic and genomic surveillance methods, and region-specific historical context for the pandemic. These considerations continue through the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of the end of the public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic on May 5, 2023. Methods In addition to updates to traditional surveillance data and dynamic panel estimates from the original study by Post et al, this study used data on sequenced SARS-CoV-2 variants from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) to identify the appearance and duration of variants of concern. We used Nextclade nomenclature to collect clade designations from sequences and Pangolin nomenclature for lineage designations of SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we conducted a 1-sided t test to determine whether regional weekly speed of COVID-19 spread was greater than an outbreak threshold of 10. We ran the test iteratively with 6 months of data from September 4, 2020, to May 12, 2023. Results The speed of COVID-19 spread for the region had remained below the outbreak threshold for 7 continuous months by the time of the WHO declaration. Acceleration and jerk were also low and stable. Although the 1- and 7-day persistence coefficients remained statistically significant and positive, the weekly shift parameters suggested the coefficients had most recently turned negative, meaning the clustering effect of new COVID-19 cases became even smaller in the 2 weeks around the WHO declaration. From December 2021 onward, Omicron was the predominant variant of concern in sequenced viral samples. The rolling t test of the speed of spread equal to 10 became entirely insignificant from October 2022 onward. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on MENA, impacting health care systems, economies, and social well-being. Although COVID-19 continues to circulate in the MENA region, the rate of transmission remained well below the threshold of an outbreak for over 1 year ahead of the WHO declaration. COVID-19 is endemic in the region and no longer reaches the threshold of the pandemic definition. Both standard and enhanced surveillance metrics confirm that the pandemic had transitioned to endemic by the time of the WHO declaration.

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“…Although COVID-19 analysis has reminded us of the role of regional organisations in Africa to support member states' preparedness and response, some regional organisations, like the West African Health Organisation, have reported building on their experience from previous epidemics and their work to strengthen health research capacity across member states [9,10]. To advance a regional approach to research capacity strengthening, cross-border collaboration between government agencies, research institutions and researchers has arisen from these emergencies, as in the instance of the establishment of the West Africa Consortium for Clinical Research on Epidemic Pathogens formed since the Ebola virus disease outbreak of 2014-2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis

Hedquist

Jones²,

Mijumbi-Deve³

et al. 2022

PLOS Glob Public Health

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Regional bodies can potentially play an important role in improving health research in Africa. This study analyses the network of African state-based regional organisations for health research and assesses their potential relationship with national health research performance metrics. After cataloguing organisations and their membership, we conducted a social network analysis to determine key network attributes of national governments’ connections via regional organisations supporting functions of health research systems. This data was used to test the hypothesis that state actors with more connections to other actors via regional organisations would have higher levels of health research performance across indicators. With 21 unique regional organisations, the African continent is densely networked around health research systems issues. In general, the regional network for health research is inclusive. No single actor serves as a nexus. However, when statistics are grouped by African Union regions, influential poles emerge, with the most predominate spheres of influence in Eastern and Western Africa. Further, when connectivity data was analysed against national health research performance, there were no statistically significant relationships between increased connectivity and higher performance of key health research metrics. The inclusive and dense network dynamics of African regional organisations for health research strengthening present key opportunities for knowledge diffusion and cooperation to improve research capacity on the continent. Further reflection is needed on appropriate and meaningful ways to assess the role of regionalism and evaluate the influence of regional organisations in strengthening health research systems in Africa.

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How does the West African Health Organisation (WAHO) contribute to the evidence based decision-making and practice during COVID-19 pandemic in ECOWAS region?

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Lessons Learned From Covid-19 Modelling Efforts for Policy Decision-Making in Lower- And Middle-Income Countries

Lessons Learned From Covid-19 Modelling Efforts for Policy Decision-Making in Lower- And Middle-Income Countries

Updated Surveillance Metrics and History of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020-2023) in the Middle East and North Africa: Longitudinal Trend Analysis

Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis

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