School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine

Cleaveland, Haydon, Lembo

Background

This grant relates to a costed extension of a Wellcome Trust-funded consortium, AfriqueOne, established to strengthen capacity in ‘One Health’ research across sub-Saharan Africa. Such capacity will empower the next generation of African scientists to develop well-implemented research agendas aimed at achieving improvements in the management of endemic diseases affecting human and animal health in their own countries.

The Afrique One consortium, led by Prof Bassirou Bonfoh of the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire, comprises an expanding network of African and European institutions spanning over 15 countries. A key achievement of the consortium include the establishment of successful East-West linkages between the Anglophone and Francophone research communities in Africa, and leading European research institutions, such as the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine (IBAHCM) at the University of Glasgow in the UK and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland. Throughout the first five years of implementation, the consortium has generated a framework to support the career progression of postdoctoral scientists in inter-disciplinary health-related research in African universities.

As part of the recently awarded one-year costed extension, capacity will be further strengthened amongst existing and new postgraduate students and post-doctoral scientists to generate key outputs, such as scientific publications and competitive multi-partner grant applications, which will provide opportunities for further advancements in their research career paths.

Our contribution

The component of the costed extension led by IBAHCM (Dan Haydon, Sarah Cleaveland and Tiziana Lembo) will contribute to two of the five disease research themes that the consortium currently focuses on, endemic foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and canine rabies, building on considerable strengths of the Institute in these areas.

Specifically, support will be provided to Afrique One scientists in the development of two case studies.

• The first case study will investigate the political and economic incentives and barriers of FMD in Tanzania, contributing to the identification of stakeholders who have an interest in FMD control and who are more broadly driving current policy development in Tanzania (at the government level, including the livestock and wildlife sectors, and at the commercial level, including high-production and traditional agro-pastoralist and pastoralist systems).
• In the second case study, expertise acquired from two decades of research on canine rabies in east Africa will provide critical inputs in the design of a porgramme to investogate the epidemiology and ecology of rabies in Senegal.

Building on the work of Afrique One, the Institute will also contribute to the development of a structured programme of scientific training focusing on African PhD students through new grant applications to continue supporting the consortium and linkages with existing doctoral training programmes involving the Institute and a broad range of international partners.

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First published: 11 December 2014