Tagged: Global One Health

In March, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health held the eighth National Healthcare Innovation and Quality Summit in Addis Ababa at the headquarters of the Africa Union. The ministry invited The Ohio State University Global One Health initiative (GOHi) to present its progress on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded antimicrobial resistance (AMR) project.

A powerful group of antibiotics called “carbapenems” are often relied on for infections where treatment with other antibiotics has failed, according to the Journal of Hospital Infection. Experts from the Global One Health initiative (GOHi), in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, are working to train medical professionals in Ethiopia to detect organisms that resist these antibiotics, helping reduce the future incidence of antibiotic resistance in patients.

The Ohio State University Global One Health initiative (GOHi) is supporting the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority (EFDA) in undertaking a causality assessment of adverse events following immunizations (AEFI) reported to the national pharmacovigilance system.

The team conducted the assessment in January with 33 participants, including the pharmacovigilance advisory committee members and the pharmacovigilance team from the EFDA.

The Ohio State University Global One Health Initiative (GOHi) has supported Acute Febrile Illness (AFI) surveillance in Ethiopia in collaboration with the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI). This project aims to strengthen the biosurveillance and laboratory detection capacity of the EPHI for a broad range of pathogens causing AFI in Ethiopia and to inform the public on the magnitude, risk and appropriate prevention and control mechanisms. So far, the team has enrolled more than 1,000 AFI cases and collected samples from five hospitals to test for selected pathogens.

Implementing robust infection prevention and control (IPC) measures is crucial for delivering proper healthcare services to patients. IPC grounded in practical and evidence-based strategies protects patients and healthcare workers from preventable infections.

Ensuring patient care improvement, optimal diagnostic test yield and precise treatment guidance hinges on properly collecting specimens. Training healthcare professionals in standard specimen collection procedures is pivotal for effective disease control and prevention. Microbiology labs frequently reported receiving poor specimen quality from Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital (TASH), highlighting a significant issue and leading to false positive and negative results.

The fight against the emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant organisms needs intervention on several fronts. One area of focus is advocacy – creating awareness among the public and healthcare professional communities – and there's no better time to achieve this than during World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW).

The Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) and partners organized a workshop in Ethiopia in November to document and institutionalize Ethiopia's experience in COVID-19 pandemic preparedness and response. The findings will inform Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Resilience (HEPRR) efforts and be a reference for future use, enabling better preparedness and responses to similar public health emergencies. Additionally, the report will contribute to national planning, such as the National Action Plan for Health Security and contingency planning for imminent hazards.

The Global One Health initiative (GOHi) conducted training on Hospital-Based Sentinel Surveillance (HBSS) for Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) for vaccines in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority (EFDA).

Researchers representing six food safety projects presented their findings at a workshop in Addis Ababa, which focused on Ethiopia's health and economic burden of foodborne diseases and the challenges and opportunities for improving food safety.