Infectious Diseases beyond COVID-19

Addressing and containing infectious diseases is a major global challenge. While the fight against the recent pandemic has enabled unprecedented progress in many areas, the focus on COVID-19 has also simultaneously led to reduced control measures for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, significantly leading to a profound increase in cases and deaths. Given this observation, it is time to take a comprehensive approach to manage all infectious diseases. Future strategies need to incorporate broader integrated control programs, rapid responses and new technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence) to reduce global morbidity and mortality. 

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, together with the Académie Nationale des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal (ANSTS) and the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences (EAS), are organizing a two-day workshop using the COVID-19 pandemic as a starting point to look at a broader picture of Infectious Diseases. It aims to discuss the newest advances in research about re-emerging Infectious Diseases, future pandemic preparedness and the integration of the One Health approach. 

In a public roundtable, representatives of various stakeholders from politics, business and science will discuss the experiences and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has demonstrated how quickly infectious diseases can spread worldwide when hitting unprepared societies. While no one can prevent the outbreak of new infectious diseases, better preparedness and resilient health systems can help mitigate future pandemics.

Prior investments in infectious diseases, open science, research infrastructure and human resource capacity building efforts and strong collaborations and partnerships between LMICs and HICs enabled unprecedented progress in the development of diagnostics; vaccines and treatments buttressed by strong information systems. However, challenges like the equal access and distribution of diagnostics vaccines and treatments between LMIC and HIC remain. The recent health crises has once more shown how important a multi-sectorial and multi-dimensional approach to pandemics should be. How can societies effectively implement prevention measures? And how can pandemic preparedness be increased globally?  

The scientific coordinators of this meeting are:  

• Quarraisha Abdool Karim (ASSAf)
• Papa Salif Sow & Mamadou Ndoye (ANSTS)
• Wondwossen Amogne (EAS) 
• Stefan H.E. Kaufmann ML (Leopoldina)

It will be the fourth workshop of a series on Infectious Diseases for post‐doc researchers from Africa and Europe, which ASSAf and Leopoldina initiated in 2016.