Strengthening surveillance and response to avian and pandemic influenza by national health authorities of burkina faso (2021-2026) - human influenza was neglected before 2009 in burkina faso,…

Strengthening surveillance and response to avian and pandemic influenza by national health authorities of burkina faso (2021-2026) - human influenza was neglected before 2009 in burkina faso, despite the 3 to 5 million cases of respiratory infections and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide. Indeed, in burkina faso, human influenza was not included in the list of diseases under surveillance. In addition, despite the large number of local chickens raised per year (44 millions) in burkina faso, avian influenza and other poultry diseases are not subject to systematic veterinary surveillance. Two outbreaks of avian influenza (H5N1) occurred in 2006-2007 and 2015, resulting in an economic loss of at least US$8 million to poultry farms each outbreak. With technical and financial support from namru-3 cairo, CDC atlanta, and USAID, a national influenza reference laboratory (nirl) was implemented by the ministry of health and began the human influenza surveillance in 2009.at the beginning of the surveillance, only influenza-like illness (ILI) was monitored in two sentinel sites (less than 600 specimens analyzed per year) and the prevalence of influenza was 6.7%. When surveillance was expanded to include severe acute respiratory infections (sari), at four new sites (over 800 specimens per year), through the cooperative agreement funded by CDC atlanta, in 2016, influenza prevalence increased to 16.57%. Nirl regularly sent specimens to the who collaborating center for influenza, CDC atlanta. The technical platform of nirl has improved significantly year after year: nirl detected for the first time, by molecular biology, H5N1 avian influenza in 2006, human influenza a (H1N1)PDM 09 in 2009, dengue in 2014 and 2016 and covid-19 in 2020 in burkina faso. The occurrence of covid with its economic and health consequences has contributed to reduce the efforts for sustainability of influenza surveillance by the ministry of health. IT is therefore imperative to resume surveillance of influenza and unusual respiratory events in order to consolidate the achievement and pursue the effort for the susta inability. The necessity to still reinforce the weak laboratory capacity, the low skill level of human resources and the insufficiency of intra- and intersectional collaboration are major gaps for the sustainability of the current surveillance and response system. The purpose of this proposal which include influenza core activities and non influenza activities is to request CDC partnership in supporting the following objectives for burkina faso : i) to reinforce the capacity of burkina faso for routine influenza and other respiratory disease surveillance systems, to monitor, detect, respond and mitigate transmission; II) to improve the country capacity for non-influenza viral and bacterial respiratory pathogens surveillance and coordination of the national and international partnerships of the surveillance programs to strengthen the capacities of the country to detect respond potential outbreaks; III) to participate fully in the global influenza surveillance and response system (gisrs) by providing samples to the who influenza collaborating centers to the annual vaccine strains selection. To reach these objectives the project will be implemented and conducted in an intra- and intersectional collaboration by several local structures and institution : the ministry of health, the ministry in charge of animal health, the one health plate-form of burkina faso, ...