This was in recognition of its excellence in innovative malaria-related research.
Award ceremony
The 10th September 2024 marked 20 years of the US Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC) establishment of an office in Cameroon. CRID was invited among other partners to the celebration of this milestone at Hilton Hotel in Yaoundé. The event was chaired by the minister of public health, Dr Manaouda Malachie. The day began with a symposium, where participants were given a brief history of CDC alongside an overview of its joint public impact in Cameroon. Then followed a presentation of awards to key partners and institutions. The Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID) was acknowledged for its excellence in innovative malaria-related research. The award was handed by Dr Habimana Phanuel, Country Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Cameroon. For Dr Tchouakui Magellan, CRID’s Executive Director’s representative at this event, “It’s always encouraging to know that our work is recognized and appreciated by our peers”. This distinction comes two weeks after CRID organised a workshop to train regional staff from health districts in Cameroon on the surveillance of Anopheles stephensi as part of the CDC-funded project.
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panelists
The day ended with an open house, during which university students had the opportunity to exchange with the CDC staff and their partners on the career path and hiring processes of CDC, internship for students etc…They had also a chance to hear about the expertise needed to work in public health, and observe how the United States of America has contributed to public health in Cameroon over the past 20 years. During this showcase, CRID had a stand animated by Mr. Williams Tchapga, Insectary manager and Sonia Ngongang-Yipmo, Ph.D. student at CRID. All this was done under the supervision of Dr Tchouakui Magellan, Research scientist and coordinator of CDC projects at CRID. Their stand had an outstanding apparatus which permitted visitors to see for their first time how mosquitoes are collected in field, reared at the insectary, tested for susceptibility to insecticides using CDC bottle tests and WHO tubes bioassay. More importantly, visitors could observe how to perform molecular analysis.
CRID’s stand
As a reminder, the collaboration between CDC and CRID started in 2022 with the project entitled «Novel molecular diagnostic tools to detect emerging resistance to new generation public health insecticides». The project, funded by the Office of Advanced Molecular Detection at CDC, aimed to identify molecular markers of chlorfenapyr resistance in the primary African malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae, and use them to develop a DNA-based molecular diagnostic assay for chlorfenapyr resistance monitoring. One year later, CRID was awarded a second project by the CDC entitled ‘’A Population Genomics Approach for Tracking Anopheles stephensi Invasion in Central Africa’’ aiming to establish the extent of Anopheles stephensi distribution on the continent, its introduction and spreading pattern, and recommend approaches to control contain, or eliminate this invasive species from non-endemic areas in Africa and therefore limit its impacts on global malaria. Thankful to CDC for its invitation to its 20th anniversary and award, CRID looks forward to having a more fruitful collaboration with them.
