Professor Romain Glèlè Kakaï, Head of HRH-SEMCA
G-WAC and HRH-SEMCA are in partnership to strengthen capacity in pandemic prevention/preparedness. As part of this collaboration, the G-WAC organized the first Biennial West African Policy Dialogue on Pandemic Preparedness in Accra, Ghana. The theme of the policy dialogue is “Capabilities for Better data, better analytics, better decisions”. It has brought together policymakers from seven West African countries. Directors of the National Institutes, relevant ministerial department leaders, and selected researchers were also invited. The Biennial Policy Dialogue aims to bring together every two years some thirty (30) carefully selected participants to establish and maintain a strong network of key stakeholders involving West African policymakers and researchers to explore strategic options for harnessing data and new technology to strengthen evidence-based decision-making for epidemic and pandemic preparedness, response and prevention in West Africa.
As the Director of the HRH-SEMCA, Prof. Glèlè Kakaï participated in this event and gave a presentation on “COVID-19 modeling in West Africa”. His talk presented the main achievements and ongoing studies on COVID-19 modeling in the Hub. These are:
- Application of existing modeling techniques on West African COVID-19 data, published;
- Development of new modeling techniques;
- Evaluation of modeling techniques.
The ongoing studies concern:
- The development of a disease-behaviour dynamics model;
- The assessment of the impacts of vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19 dynamics in Africa;
- The mathematical evaluation of potential seasonality in COVID-19 dynamics.
Some pictures of the workshop are presented below.
Prof. Romain Glèlè Kakaï (Head of HRH-SEMCA)