The Mérieux Foundation is entering the second phase of its mandate as part of the project to strengthen disease surveillance systems in ECOWAS countries (REDISSE) to support five new countries in West Africa.
The West African Health Organization (WAHO) has granted the Mérieux Foundation and the Center for International Cooperation in Health and Development (CCISD) a second mandate within the REDISSE project. This new mandate will enable the Mérieux Foundation to strengthen the capacities of health district laboratories in five new ECOWAS countries; Benin, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria.
In this context, introductory missions to this new phase were organized in Niger, Nigeria, Benin and Mauritania. Organized by WAHO, these meetings allowed teams from CCISD and the Mérieux Foundation to meet the health authorities of each country to present to them the challenges of the project, the anchoring within the REDISSE project as a whole and the criteria that will enable them to identify the health districts that will be strengthened.
The second phase of the REDISSE project aims to set up Epidemiological Surveillance Centers (CSE) in 53 health district laboratories, identified by the countries' Ministries of Health. In this sense, the Mérieux Foundation has been mandated to strengthen the capacities of the laboratories of the health districts. In particular, it oversees the strengthening of the skills of laboratory managers in terms of diagnosis and biological confirmation and is involved in improving epidemiological surveillance and the response capacities of district laboratories.
This new step follows the first phase of the REDISSE project, successfully piloted between 2017 and 2019 in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Togo. In total, 47 laboratories have benefited from the support of the Mérieux Foundation in these five countries.
About REDISSE
The REDISSE project - Strengthening Disease Surveillance Systems in West Africa -, initiated by the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Health Organization with the financial support of the World Bank, aims to strengthen the surveillance and response systems against infectious diseases in ECOWAS countries, through the establishment of Epidemiological Surveillance Centers at the health district level.
