First meeting of the GenEpi Network Steering Committee
GenPath Africa is part of the GenEpi Network, a collaboration between the Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking (EDCTP3) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). On 24 July 2024, the network’s Steering Committee came together for a first virtual meeting. Participants included EDCTP project coordinators, scientific leads, working group leaders and representatives of Gates-funded initiatives and funders.
The meeting began with project coordinators sharing updates on recent project activities and achievements, highlighting efforts to implement and strengthen genomic surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa. Following updates from EpiGen Ethiopia, ODIN, PANGenS, GREAT-LIFE and GenPath Africa, members of the Gates-funded initiatives PHA4GE and the NGS Academy also shared insights into their work to increase genomic surveillance capacities and efforts to build training infrastructures in the context of genomic epidemiology.
The second half of the meeting focused on the joint work across projects, which is organized in working groups. GenPath Africa’s Dr Claudia Schacht (LINQ) is leading the Communication and Policy Translation Working Group. She provided updates on the group’s recent activities and shared key insights into the process of setting up the group and coordinating work among all participants. Working groups that are still in the process of being set up include Training (which is co-lead by another GenPath Africa partner, Dr Sam Oyola from ILRI), Data Standards, Communities of Practice, and various Technical Working Groups
The meeting provided a great opportunity for GenEpi Network partners to discuss the future of this exciting collaboration and find ways to best combine efforts to create and strengthen sustainable infrastructures of genomic surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa.
The GenEpi Network is a collaboration comprised of six projects funded by the Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking (EDCTP3) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Together, these projects aim to leverage the genomic sequencing capacity being built in Africa to support epidemiology and surveillance of endemic and epidemic pathogens.
You can learn more about the GenEpi Network on our website: https://www.genepi-network.org/
