The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) project on Defining and Integrating Essential NCD Interventions into National Health Systems

Africa CDC works on public health initiatives in the African Union, aiming to strengthen the capacity of Africa’s public health institutions to handle both infectious diseases and chronic illnesses.

The Bergen Center for Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS) has entered a four-year collaboration with the health economics programme of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). This partnership which is part of the Norad-funded ‘Defining and Integrating NCD interventions in national health systems’ project will help Africa CDC in narrowing evidence policy gaps for its member states.

As part of this, a senior researcher (Josephine Gakii Gatua) and a PhD candidate (Marta Minwyelet Terefe) have been deployed in a 50-50 work arrangement. Josephine will be conducting research and supervising the PhD student, Marta, who, in turn, is committed to advancing her doctoral studies. This arrangement is concurrently aligned with working for Africa CDC, where both Josephine and Marta will be actively contributing their expertise and efforts.

Establishment of the Technical Working Group and the Steering Committee

The Health Economic and Financing Programme (HEP) has established a technical working group that aims to develop a continental framework for priority setting/evaluation of health technologies. The steering committee (led by Lumbwe Chola and including Brian Asare (both BCEPS) and the HEP team (including Josephine and Marta) led a broad consultative meeting in Nairobi in June 2023 with donor participation (including Norad). The aim is to complete the framework for submission by June 2024 and ratification by member states thereafter.    

Workshops on economic evaluation and priority setting

The HEP programme had devised a series of 5 regional workshops to sensitize senior policymakers of all 55 countries in Africa to the importance and possibilities for the use of economic evaluation within health priority-setting processes. The curricula were developed by HEP with support from WHO, The International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI)/Center for Global Development, and BCEPS. 

Two workshops were successfully conducted. The first, for East Africa, happened in June (Nairobi) and the second, for West Africa, was conducted in mid-November (Dakar). BCEPS provided trainers/facilitators to the workshops in addition to BCEPS’ staff seconded to the HEP.