Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) has praised Tanzania’s efforts and cooperation in fighting the Covid-19 in the continent.
“Let me thank Tanzania for working with us (ACDC) and African Union (AU) in combating the Covid-19 pandemic. We thank for the efforts it has made to ensure that population in Africa is safe,” stated Dr Talkmore Maruta, Senior Biosafety and Biosecurity Officer of the ACDC.
Dr Maruta made the statement yesterday in Dar es Salaam, where a technical team comprising experts from AU member states have convened for two-day meeting to review legal frameworks on infection prevention and control as well as biosecurity and biosafety.
The review workshop, which started yesterday, has pulled representatives from 15 member states. Dr Maruta explained that the participants would review and endorse the final documents of the frameworks, which would then be presented to the AU specialised technical Committee meeting scheduled for November 1st to 5th, 2021.
“These legal frameworks are to ensure that member states have necessary legislative structures that allow us to effectively implement the public health and safety measures, not only for this Covid-19 pandemic but also for future pandemics,” said the Biosecurity Officer.
Elaborating further, he noted that the aim was also to make the Member States, at national level, to have appropriate legislative system and infrastructures, which would allow them to have power to enforce the legislatives. He said the reason behind developing the legal frameworks was that in the last couple of months, they had learnt that without appropriate legislative system, legal instruments sometime hamper or slow implementation of the required interventions for effective prevention and control of pandemics.
“We have been developing these documents for some months by involving stakeholders in member states, so that they can see whether they have the requirements needed to be embedded,” he added On her part, Dr Yavande Alimi, Coordinator of Antimicrobial Resistance and One Health Programme at the ACDC, argued that during the pandemics such Ebola, frontline workers have been the ones mainly affected.
“Healthcare workers are the ones, who make our health system stronger…that is why improving prevention and control is very crucial,” she said.
Commenting, Prof Mecky Matee, Deputy Leader of the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS), noted that the organization organized the meeting in Tanzania on behalf of the ACDC.
Prof Matee said the process to prepare the legal framework documents started in 2019, adding that it was important to have such documents in the region, because about 70 per cent of the infectious diseases come from animals.
The legal frameworks will promote safe health care facilities, patient safety and quality universal health coverage; and strengthening the biosafety and biosecurity systems of Member States in order build their capacity and to comply with the international requirements and regulations.
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