by Jennyfer Ambe DrPH
Why African Nations Must Fund Our Own Health Architecture: Front-End Surveillance to Treatment Centers.
“No single organization can stop an outbreak alone.”
That line comes from Professor Yap Boum II, Head of Emergency Preparedness and Response Division at Africa CDC, in a recent LinkedIn post. It sounds like a truism. It is not. Sit with it, and it quietly dismantles the reactive, siloed mindset that dominates health emergency planning across the continent. Too many of us still treat an outbreak as someone else’s crisis, right up until the exact moment it arrives at our own doorstep.
We know this cycle all too well. A pathogen surfaces in an isolated district, and neighboring regions watch with sympathy, relieved that the trouble is safely contained “over there.” Resources only mobilize once cases cross an invisible line. By then, the intervention is invariably costlier, more chaotic, and more deadly than it ever needed to be. Professor Boum frames the alternative with exceptional clarity, noting that beyond the various institutional “jackets” we wear (the agencies, ministries, and NGOs in branded vests)… it is the lives of people that matter most. These organizations are instruments. Their worth is measured by whether a child in a remote border village survives, not by how many logos line up behind a podium.
Disease fundamentally respects none of the lines drawn for us at a conference table in Berlin in 1884. A virus traveling a lorry route or crossing a river with a family pays no heed to these porous boundaries. When panic rises, the default political instinct is to seal crossings and ground flights. It feels decisive, but it is mostly theater. People move regardless through unmonitored bush paths, carrying the pathogen untracked. The border is not the place to build a wall; it is the place to build a shared relationship.
The architecture for this integration already exists. Regional biosecurity frameworks and networks like the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which includes 71 member countries alongside international, non-governmental, and private sector partners, demonstrate the value of nations preventing, detecting, and responding to outbreaks together. Built to accelerate the core capacities defined in the International Health Regulations (2005), frameworks like the GHSA show what is possible when we do not leave individual nations to improvise completely alone. Africa CDC’s recent coordinated continental response to mpox showed this logic in practice.
However, true health sovereignty requires us to confront an uncomfortable reality: too much of our continental biosecurity and preparedness still waits on external urgency and foreign financing. A continent that only mobilizes once an external fund unlocks money has accepted a permanently reactive posture. We must shift our focus entirely and invest heavily in our own front-end surveillance, early detection, prevention, and mitigation systems before the next emergency hits. Crucially, this means funding and equipping our own regional treatment centers, strengthening biosecurity protections in laboratories, and supporting community health workers.
We must treat a threat in one African nation as a threat to us all. A virus will not wait for us to debate ownership. We can meet it as separate nations hoping it stops politely at the line, or as one continent that long ago stopped believing the line was ever truly there.
In solidarity,
Jennyfer Radeino Ambe, DrPH
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of any of the academic institutions, consortia, or organizations with which I am professionally affiliated.
Notes & Sources
Original Post: Available on Substack at Majority World Epidemiologist: https://majorityworldepidemiologist.substack.com/p/disease-doesnt-carry-a-passport
Professor Yap Boum II Quotes: Head of Emergency Preparedness and Response Division, Africa CDC; sourced from his recent professional commentary on collaborative outbreak management.
Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA): Launched in 2014, spanning 71 member countries, international organizations, and private sector partners, designed to accelerate compliance with the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR 2005). See: globalhealthsecurityagenda.org
Historical Reference: The 1884–85 Berlin Conference, which established European geopolitical partition parameters across the African continent.
Mpox Continental Response: Africa CDC coordinated framework for cross-border pathogen management. See: africacdc.org
Image generated by AI.