PREPAREDNESS, RESPONSE TO EMERGENCIES AND EPIDEMICS

CVD-Mali coordinates and manages responses to disease outbreaks, epidemics and other public health emergencies.

CVD-Mali & Covid-19 →

Covid-19

In March 2020, CVD-Mali Director, Professor Samba Sow, was appointed WHO Covid-19 Special Envoy for West Africa.

The role’s responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in the countries of West Africa, liaising between local and government agents and WHO representatives both regionally and centrally.

CVD-Mali has also transformed a number of its existing interventions into Covid-19 response programmes, in order to augment healthcare capacity in Mali and reinforce the country’s efforts to combat the epidemic. 

You can read more about our Covid-19 response here.

Ebola

CVD-Mali played a pivotal role in containing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. Professor Sow himself, alongside colleagues from CVD-Mali and the Ministry of Health, ran screening centres at strategically important border-crossings, evacuating suspected cases to safe areas in the Kayes region.

In August 2014, CVD-Mali joined a WHO consortium to conduct the first human trials of ChAd3-EBO-Z in Africa. The data generated from that trial directly informed GSK’s decisions with regard to the dose to be used in field trials in countries affected by the disease.