RESUMEN
Africa, home to the world's second-largest population of approximately 1.3 billion, grapples with significant challenges in meeting its medical needs, particularly in accessing quality healthcare services and products. The continent faces a continuous onslaught of emerging infectious diseases, exacerbating the strain on its already fragile public health infrastructure. The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the urgency to build local vaccine production capacity and strengthen the health infrastructure in general. The risks associated with a heavy reliance on imported vaccines were exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating the need to nurture and strengthen the local manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutic biologics. Various initiatives addressing training, manufacturing, and regulatory affairs are underway, and these require increasing dedicated and purposeful financial investment. Building vaccine manufacturing capacity requires substantial investment in training and infrastructure. This manuscript examines the current state of education in vaccinology and related sciences in Africa. It also provides an overview of the continent's efforts to address educational needs in vaccine development and manufacturing. Additionally, it evaluates the initiatives aimed at strengthening vaccine education and literacy, highlighting successful approaches and ongoing challenges. By assessing the progress made and identifying the remaining obstacles, this review offers insights into how Africa can enhance its vaccine manufacturing capacity to respond to vaccine-preventable disease challenges.
RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: Precision medicine (PM) or personalized medicine is an innovative approach that aims to tailor disease prevention and treatment to consider the differences in people's genes, environments, and lifestyles. Although many efforts have been made to accelerate the universal adoption of PM, several challenges need to be addressed in order to advance PM in Africa. Therefore, our study aimed to establish baseline data on the knowledge and perceptions of the implementation of PM in the Rwandan healthcare setting. METHOD: A descriptive qualitative study was conducted in five hospitals offering diagnostics and oncology services to cancer patients in Rwanda. To understand the existing policies regarding PM implementation in the country, two additional institutions were surveyed: the Ministry of Health (MOH), which creates and sets policies for the overall vision of the health sector, and the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC), which coordinates the implementation of health sector policies in the country. The researchers conducted 32 key informant interviews and assessed the functionality of available PM equipment in the 5 selected health facilities. The data were thematically categorized and analyzed. RESULTS: The study revealed that PM is perceived as a complex and expensive program by most health managers and health providers. The most cited challenges to implementing PM included the following: the lack of policies and guidelines; the lack of supportive infrastructures and limited suppliers of required equipment and laboratory consumables; financial constraints; cultural, behavioral, and religious beliefs; and limited trained, motivated, and specialized healthcare providers. Regarding access to health services for cancer treatment, patients with health insurance pay 10% of their medical costs, which is still too expensive for Rwandans. CONCLUSION: The study participants highlighted the importance of PM to enhance healthcare delivery if the identified barriers are addressed. For instance, Rwandan health sector leadership might consider the creation of specialized oncology centers in all or some referral hospitals with all the necessary genomic equipment and trained staff to serve the needs of the country and implement a PM program.