Context Pathogens with outbreak potential, including zoonotic types, pose severe hazards to public health. This threat gets aggravated when, simultaneously, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs, decreasing options or making it even impossible to treat. For both occurrences, laboratory surveillance is key – either regarding the investigation of pathogens with epidemic potential…
Short Description As the world comes together to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that essential services and operations continue to protect the lives of people with Tuberculosis (TB). The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to reverse much of the progress that has been made in reducing TB-related morbidity and…
Short Description Compared to other regions in the world, the African continent is faced with a particularly high number of infectious diseases. These include acute fevers of unknown origin as well as anti-infective-resistant pathogens that have barely been examined to date. This demonstrates a significant shortcoming, as illustrated by the…
Short Description PASQUALE is a project to increase patient safety in partner institutions (Faranah Regional Hospital, Guinea; Bouaké University Hospital, Ivory Coast). This project responds to the “Global Patient Safety Challenges” (GPSC) initiated by the World Health Organization. While PASQUALE 1 used the framework of the first challenge “Clean…
Short Description Health workforce is the key to health systems resilience. WHO describes a well-performing health workforce as “one that works in ways that are responsive, fair and efficient to achieve the best health outcomes possible, given available resources and circumstances”. In the current COVID-19 crisis, health care workers (HCWs)…
We stay where the animals stay, we eat where the animals eat, we drink the same water as the animals. Our interlocutor tells us this while sitting on a wooden bench in the middle of the open cattle stables surrounded by his own animals and the ones from others. It…
The COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems under considerable stress. Health care workers (HCW) are a critical part of the health system´s pandemic response and have been challenged both by high workload and high risk of exposure. The BCHW project addresses these challenges: in a multisite international study between…
During a six weeks-stay (30.1.-15.3. 2021), Paul Pitzinger from RKI (P3) visited the partner sites in both Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. One aim of the visit was to support our partners in SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics in particular technical support in serological SARS-CoV-2 analyses. Another aim was the evaluation of…
During the visit of the RKI PASQUALE members, workshops on hand hygiene training for health personnel were led by a national expert in infection prevention and control (IPC), Ms Cissé. She sensitised health workers to the fundamental importance of infection prevention and hand hygiene in health care. The workshops trained…