In light of the ongoing acute cholera crisis and vaccine shortages across parts of Eastern and Southern Africa, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) strongly supports efforts by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to establish pooled procurement and manufacturing of essential vaccines on the continent and urges wealthy countries to provide a stop-gap supply of doses immediately.
“Just from the beginning of this year, nearly 900 people have died from cholera across Africa. The vaccine provides overall effectiveness against severe disease – if these people had a chance to receive it, most of them would be alive today. This is yet another tragic example of inequity in global health that the African Union, Africa CDC, and leaders on the continent must prioritize and address as quickly as possible,” said AHF Africa Bureau Chief, Dr. Penninah Iutung. “Regional self-sufficiency through the production of essential vaccines and medical commodities in Africa should be the end goal—COVID-19 made that clear. Initiatives such as the launch of the African Medicines Agency are a move in the right direction, but we must move faster – people’s lives are at stake.”
According to Africa CDC, there were nearly 253,000 cases of cholera and 4,187 deaths across 19 African countries in 2023. Efforts to control cholera are complicated by the lack of access to clean drinking water and poor wastewater treatment infrastructure in many of the impacted hotspots. As a model for addressing such issues, AHF supported the drilling of a potable water well in Benue State, Nigeria, in 2020.
