The West African Health Organization (WAHO) granted the Mérieux Foundation and the Centre for International Cooperation in Health and Development (CCISD) a second mandate as part of the REDISSE project. This new mandate will enable the Mérieux Foundation to reinforce the sanitary district laboratories’ capacities in five more ECOWAS countries: Benin, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria.
Within this framework, introductory missions were organized in Benin, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria. Set up by the WAHO, these meetings enabled the Mérieux Foundation and CCISD teams to meet each of the countries health authorities to present the challenges and objectives of the project, the impact on the whole REDISSE project and the criteria used to identify the health districts to reinforce.
The second phase of the REDISSE project aims to implement Epidemiological Surveillance Centers (ESC) in 53 health district laboratories, identified by the Ministry of Health of each country. To do so, the Mérieux Foundation was mandated to reinforce the capacities of the health district laboratories. The Foundation will be in charge of strengthening the laboratory managers skills, in particular in diagnostics and biological confirmation, and will participate in developing epidemiological surveillance and response capacities of the district laboratories.
This new step follows the first phase of the REDISSE project, successfully carried out between 2017 and 2019 in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In total, the Mérieux Foundation has supported 47 laboratories in those five countries.
About the REDISSE project
The REDISSE project was initiated by the ECOWAS and WAHO with support from the World Bank, in order to reinforce surveillance and response systems against infectious diseases in the ECOWAS countries, through the implementation of Epidemiological Surveillance Centers at the health district level.