Media Advisory

Consultative Meeting on Africa CDC Situation Room

Dates: 19-20 February 2019

Venue: AUC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Organizers: Africa CDC and UNAIDS

Activity description:

The Situation Room is an electronic system that allows UNAIDS to directly access health information systems within Member States to produce flexible, readily comprehensible reports that can be used by health officials at all levels for decision making. The Situation Room is currently being used to aggregate surveillance and programme data for a limited range of health conditions in seven countries, including Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Africa CDC is working with UNAIDS to adopt the Situation Room and expand its coverage to include more diseases and more countries. The Situation Room has already shown great success in some countries like Kenya in translating data into decision making for HIV/AIDS. Africa CDC and UNAIDS anticipate that the same can be achieved for other diseases in other countries.

Objectives :

• Present the history and status of the Situation Room in Africa, including the successes and challenges among Member States.
• Present preliminary reports from Member States using the Situation Room for a limited number of acute infectious diseases, e.g. cholera, meningitis, measles, typhoid and yellow fever.
• Gain buy-in from Member States about (a) expansion of Situation Room to additional Member States, (b) expansion of Situation Room to additional acute infectious diseases and possibly other health indicators.
• Agree on next steps for implementing the Africa CDC Health Situation Room in interested Member States.
• Present Africa CDC priority activities for improving health information exchange in Africa

Expected participants:

Representatives of Africa CDC, African Union Commission for Social Affairs, Statistics Division of the AU Department of Economic Affairs, all 55 AU Member States, UNAIDS, WHO, Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, PEPFAR, Africa Development Bank, Global Fund, World Bank, Gavi Alliance, Global Finance Facility, and other partners.

Media Enquiry:

Mr. Molalet Tsedeke / Directorate of Information and communication /African Union Commission/ MolaletT@africa-union.org/ Tell: 0911-630631

For more information:

Dr. Sheila Shawa/ Senior Project Officer, Africa CDC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia/ Shawas@africa-union.org