The fifth African Network for Influenza Surveillance and Epidemiology (ANISE) meeting opened in Kigali, yesterday, with at least 150 global health experts in attendance.

The ANISE 2016 meeting is co-convened by the Ministry of Health, Rwanda Biomedical Centre, US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Taskforce for Global Health, and the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM).

The three-day conference seeks to encourage research in influenza in Africa, bolstering local access to vaccines, and sharing strategies and assessment tools for building efficient, standardised surveillance systems on the continent.

The experts are using the meeting to promote African gains and forge a sustainable path forward for the ANISE network.

Addressing the conference, Dr Agnes Binagwaho, the minister for health, said influenza is a public health issue and the data from such a conference can be of help in dealing with other epidemics like Ebola.

"The conference involves high level epidemiologists, academicians and experts who discuss the best way of dealing with the disease. Bringing such people helps in other fields in the health sector,” she said.

"I remember in the fight against Ebola, we used the lessons we had learnt from flue prevention.”

She emphasised the importance of partnerships and connections in response to health issues and urged participants to put into practice what is being discussed at the conference.

Dr Olushayo Oluseun Olu, the World Health Organisation country representative, said influenza is a major regional and global issue though little is known about it among the public.

"Influenza is a major regional and global issue that affects people, especially pregnant women, children under five years. Unfortunately, little is known about it in the general public.”

He also hailed Rwanda for its good response towards fighting epidemic diseases and promised that WHO will always support the country in this regard.

‘Good response mechanism’

Rwanda is one of the 30 countries with a good response to influenza and other epidemics with a national reference laboratory in Kigali that has been the national influenza testing centre since 2008.

It has capacity of detecting all the different types of influenza and acute respiratory infection.

In addition, six sentimental sites for collecting samples of influenza-like illnesses and acute respiratory infection (SARI) are already in place in five districts.

The government has also established six sites for influenza control in provinces to respond to the issue of influenza.

Influenza virus infection is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide.

Many of the world’s most deadly epidemics have been caused by influenza.

At particular risk of severe disease are young children, pregnant women, the elderly, and persons with underlying medical conditions.

The burden and epidemiology of influenza have been studied almost exclusively in developed settings, but influenza may have a different epidemiology in limited-resource settings such as Africa due to untreated co-morbidities, malnutrition, and other factors.

The African Network for Influenza Surveillance and Epidemiology was founded in 2009 to generate and disseminate such missing data and improve local preparedness for future influenza epidemics.

Dr Binagwaho said Rwanda has demonstrated overall value of vaccines in the past 15 years, as the rollout of new and underused vaccines has helped to reduce under-five mortality by two thirds, and achieve the fourth Millennium Development Goal along the way as well as saving lives.

"The benefits of vaccination programmes stretch beyond immunisation to improving health services and promoting social integration, and Rwanda is the case study to prove it. Utilising these successes as active participants of the ANISE network, Rwanda can share local health successes across regional collaborations like ANISE to better protect Africa’s one billion citizens,” the minister said in a statement.

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