Context Repeated outbreaks in Africa, including mpox, Ebola and COVID-19, underscore the central role of public health and social measures (PHSM) in controlling epidemics and protecting fragile health systems. Even so, their effectiveness is difficult to assess, which can lead to inefficient measures and unintended consequences. PREPARE is a three-year…
Context New and re-emerging infectious diseases pose an ongoing risk to public health. Political instability, climate change, and environmental degradation increase the risk of outbreaks, such as viral haemorrhagic fever. Many countries south of the Sahara, where dangerous pathogens are endemic, have limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient capacity to…
Context Guinea is a low-income country in Western Africa and holds a complex burden of disease with malaria, respiratory diseases, stroke, diarrheal diseases, and preterm birth complications as the top causes of death. The African region has limited infection prevention and control (IPC) capacities, with healthcare-associated infections (HAI) surveillance being…
Context Viral haemorrhagic fevers, especially Lassa fever, cause outbreaks in West Africa, including in Nigeria, Guinea, and Benin. Many referral hospitals face limited intensive care capacity, shortages of essential equipment and supplies, and insufficiently trained staff. This leads to preventable deaths and weak preparedness for larger outbreaks. The MEVIN 2.0…
Advancing sustainable genomic surveillance capacity in West Africa is a central goal of the GHPP-CELESTA project. In 2025, CELESTA partners achieved two major milestones: the successful training and implementation of the ViMOP bioinformatics pipeline (https://www.bnitm.de/en/news/news/neue-pipeline-vimop), and the establishment of a new sequencing unit at the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever…
Context The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the critical importance of genomic surveillance for protecting public health. By analysing the genetic material of viruses, outbreaks can be detected earlier, transmission pathways can be understood, and effective control measures can be implemented. This is particularly useful, for example, when new variants emerge or…
Across the globe, hand hygiene is promoted to fight the spread of healthcare associated infections. Despite multiple ongoing hand hygiene campaigns and projects, healthcare associated infection rates remain high especially in low- and middle-income countries. The text depicts the project journey since 2017, when PASQUALE has been expanding its work…
As part of this new programme phase of GHPP (2023-2025), our project CELESTA focuses on expanding the genomic surveillance capacity for RNA (ribonucleic acid) viruses of our cooperation partners. They are: the Laboratoire de Centre de Recherche en Virologie – Laboratoire des Fièvres Hemorragiques Virales de Guinée (CRV-LFHVG) in Conakry, Guinea,…
Yet, the 2019 Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria showed a magnitude that was even higher than the unprecedented Lassa fever outbreak in 2018 during the same period. This increase was equally mirrored in the increased workload of the laboratory. In this context, there was a clear need to support…