From September 24 – 25, 2024, the Cameroon chapter of the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA) co-organized with the AMMNet Cameroon chapter its 3rd scientific conference in Yaoundé.
It was an occasion for scientific researchers, health experts and students to brainstorm on ways of eliminating vector- borne diseases (VBD). During two days, they converged to the Yaoundé Conference Centre for this major event on the theme “Community Engagement for the Elimination of Vector-Borne Diseases: Use of One Health Approach and New Technologies”. Obviously, CRID was represented at various levels through-out the conference. The opening ceremony was chaired by Dr Nko’o Ayissi Georges, a representative from the Ministry of Public Health. During this moment, CRID’s executive director Prof. Charles Wondji made a speech. He reaffirmed his support for the success of PAMCA’s activities in general and those of PAMCA Cameroon in particular. Moreover, he named some challenges to overcome in order to accelerate vector control, among which that of generating clear scientific evidence, enabling national control programs to develop the best possible control strategies. “CRID, through its varied research activities, is making and will continue to make its contribution in this respect through its scientific projects and publications”, he added.
The Oral Session 2 of the conference, entitled “Modeling & Vector Control” was entirely dedicated to CRID’s ACoMVeC (African Consortium in Modeling for Vector Control) team. During this session moderated by Misonge Ivan, researchers used a series of presentations to show the catalytic role that modeling plays in controlling VBDs. Oral presentations were made by Essame Bruno, Ntembue Chadrac, Metsadong Manuela and Kezeta Sylvère. On day 2, Dr Tchouakui Magellan, Principal Investigator at CRID had the honour of co-moderating the session on: “Empowerment of communities, new advances, surveillance and control of VBDs”. During this, Prof Cyrille Ndo, Head of Parasitology and Microbiology Department at CRID did a presentation on “The Resistance of Anopheles to insecticides: Threats or Opportunities for malaria control?”. Over the course of the day, a handful of CRID students presented their research work.
One of the most exciting and thrilling highlights during the 3rd PAMCA conference was the award for the top three presentations (posters, oral, and booster talks). Raissa Manyaka, a Ph.D. student at CRID, received the first prize for her oral presentation on « The 4.3 Kb-CYP6P9b structural variant imposes high fitness cost on key life traits of Anopheles funestus mosquitoes from central region of Cameroon ». She was followed by Tatiane Assatse and Sonia Ngongang who obtained the second and third prizes respectively. In addition, Vanessa Nganang, Ph.D. student, was awarded the first prize for her booster talk on “Elucidating the Role of Arginosuccinate Lyase in Conferring Pyrethroid Resistance in the Major African Vectors Anopheles funestus”. Worthy to note is the fact that many students at CRID took part to the conference as hostesses or stewards for PAMCA an AMMNET(Applied Malaria Modeling Network).
