{"id":8962,"date":"2022-01-15T10:21:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T10:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong"},"modified":"2022-01-15T10:50:11","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T10:50:11","slug":"africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong","title":{"rendered":"Africa CDC proved itself during the pandemic,\u2019 says John Nkengasong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. <\/strong><\/span>John Nkengasong, who has gained global plaudits for his leadership in the fight against Covid-19, is leaving Africa CDC. In an exclusive interview he looks back on his time there.<\/p>\n<p>If the Covid-19 pandemic had struck five years earlier, Africa would have been in an even more precarious situation than it is today. The continent of almost 1.4bn people would have been without a public health agency to coordinate a multilateral response to the most serious health crisis in decades.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, in 2016, the African Union (AU) established the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which aimed to emulate the Atlanta-based US equivalent as a coordinating body for public health.<\/p>\n<p>However, it would take a lot of work to transform Africa CDC into an organisation that could meaningfully tackle Africa\u2019s long list of public health concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came here [Addis Ababa] five years ago and I didn\u2019t have an office for almost a year,\u201d says John Nkengasong, the outgoing director who oversaw the establishment of the specialised agency and has been lauded worldwide for his leadership role during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had to create job descriptions, we had to write 300 individual applications. Therefore, in the first 18 months we were just doing<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\">Mauritius<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. John Nkengasong, who has gained global plaudits for his leadership in the fight against Covid-19, is leaving Africa CDC. In an exclusive interview he looks back on his time there. If the Covid-19 pandemic had struck five years earlier, Africa would have been in an even more precarious situation than it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":8961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8,16],"tags":[1606,233,245,241],"class_list":["post-8962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","category-twitter","tag-africa-cdc","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mauritius","tag-mauritius"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Africa CDC proved itself during the pandemic,\u2019 says John Nkengasong - Mauritius<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"John Nkengasong, who has gained global plaudits for his leadership in the fight against Covid-19, is leaving Africa CDC. ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Africa CDC proved itself during the pandemic,\u2019 says John Nkengasong\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Nkengasong, who has gained global plaudits for his leadership in the fight against Covid-19, is leaving Africa CDC. ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mauritius\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-01-15T10:21:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-01-15T10:50:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2022\/01\/img-61e2a6c76e2d4.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"530\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"275\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Africa CDC proved itself during the pandemic,\u2019 says John Nkengasong\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-01-15T10:21:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-01-15T10:50:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\"},\"wordCount\":228,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2022\/01\/img-61e2a6c76e2d4.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa CDC\",\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mauritius\",\"Mauritius\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"files\",\"homepage-english\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/africa-cdc-proved-itself-during-the-pandemic-says-john-nkengasong\",\"name\":\"Africa CDC proved itself during the pandemic,\u2019 says John Nkengasong - 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