Spatial and temporal distribution of infectious disease epidemics, disasters and other potential public health emergenci
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(2020) 16:9
RESEARCH
Open Access
Spatial and temporal distribution of infectious disease epidemics, disasters and other potential public health emergencies in the World Health Organisation Africa region, 2016–2018 Ambrose Otau TALISUNA1*, Emelda Aluoch OKIRO2, Ali Ahmed YAHAYA1, Mary STEPHEN1, Boukare BONKOUNGOU1, Emmanuel Onuche MUSA1, Etienne Magloire MINKOULOU1, Joseph OKEIBUNOR1, Benido IMPOUMA1, Haruna Mamoudou DJINGAREY1, N’da Konan Michel YAO1, Sakuya OKA1, Zabulon YOTI1 and Ibrahima Socé FALL3
Abstract Background: Emerging and re-emerging diseases with pandemic potential continue to challenge fragile health systems in Africa, creating enormous human and economic toll. To provide evidence for the investment case for public health emergency preparedness, we analysed the spatial and temporal distribution of epidemics, disasters and other potential public health emergencies in the WHO African region between 2016 and 2018. Methods: We abstracted data from several sources, including: the WHO African Region’s weekly bulletins on epidemics and emergencies, the WHO-Disease Outbreak News (DON) and the Emergency Events Database (EMDAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Other sources were: the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) and the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON). We included information on the time and location of the event, the number of cases and deaths and counterchecked the different data sources. Data analysis: We used bubble plots for temporal analysis and generated graphs and maps showing the frequency and distribution of each event. Based on the frequency of events, we categorised countries into three: Tier 1, 10 or more events, Tier 2, 5–9 events, and Tier 3, less than 5 or no event. Finally, we compared the event frequencies to a summary International Health Regulations (IHR) index generated from the IHR technical area scores of the 2018 annual reports. Results: Over 260 events were identified between 2016 and 2018. Forty-one countries (87%) had at least one epidemic between 2016 and 2018, and 21 of them (45%) had at least one epidemic annually. Twenty-two countries (47%) had disasters/humanitarian crises. Seven countries (the epicentres) experienced over 10 events and all of them had limited or developing IHR capacities. The top five causes of epidemics were: Cholera, Measles, Viral Haemorrhagic Diseases, Malaria and Meningitis. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, Health Emergencies programme, Brazzaville, Congo Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the C
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