IVI and Nigeria

 

Ongoing Collaboration

 

Hepatitis E Epidemiology in Africa (HEVA)

In late 2020, IVI received a $500,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct seroepidemiology of HEV in Africa. In 2021, IVI will form a consortium with the Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal; the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria; and the Institute Nationale de Recherche Biomédicale in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to screen approximately 18,000 blood samples from 19 countries to determine the prevalence of HEV across different demographics, groups, and regions in Africa.

 

SETA Plus & COVID-19

Starting in 2020, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted an additional $4.3 million USD in funding for the continuation of typhoid surveillance in Africa. Operating at SETA sites in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Madagascar, and Nigeria, SETA Plus will help establish disease burden data on invasive salmonella and invasive non-typhoidal salmonella and estimate the cost of illness associated with these diseases. 

 

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the SETA Plus team provided the sites in Ibadan, Nigeria with personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensure the safety of team members and study participants, and co-developed risk mitigation plans.

 

Previous Collaboration

 

Severe Typhoid in Africa (SETA)

The Severe Typhoid Fever in Africa (SETA) program, a multicountry surveillance study, aimed to understand the burden of severe typohid fever and the associated case fatalities, clinical characteristics, and potential host risk factors that may be related to the disease severity. The SETA program also aimed to investigate the host immune response and bacterial shedding patterns associated with invasive salmonellosis. 

 

SETA conducted prospective healthcare facility–based surveillance with active screening of enteric fever and clinically suspected severe typhoid fever with complications was performed using a standardized protocol across the study sites in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, and Nigeria.

 

From 2017 to 2019, SETA conducted surveillance of two regions in Oyo State, Nigeria: the capital Ibadan and the Ibarapa North area. These surveillance programs were conducted in collaboration with the University of Ibadan College of Medicine and University College Hospital, Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology. 

 

The data generated by SETA is playing a central role in the development adequate immunization strategies and typhoid and iNTS disease control and prevention policies. The SETA study results will have a direct impact, particularly in countries eligible for support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on the future uptake of typhoid conjugate vaccines.