Article
Promoting Surveillance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Moving to Wastewater and Environmental Genomic Surveillance Requires More Attention
ACS ES&T Water
(2023)
Abstract
Laboratory infrastructure and local capacity are essential for surveillance programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Globally, morbidity and mortality due to unsafe household drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene remain major problems. (1) During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, more than a few water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) researchers pivoted to use polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods to indicate community disease spread from sewered and non-sewered sanitation samples. The transition from WASH (Sustainable Development Goal 6) to wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE; Sustainable Development Goal 3) was a comfortable shift. Physical laboratory infrastructure, equipment, and workforce capacity were quickly adapted to meet public health needs during the pandemic. However, the expansion of genomic surveillance with sanitation samples requires more thought leadership around environmental health research considerations in low-resource settings as the transition is proving to be much more challenging.
Keywords
- Computer simulations,
- COVID-19,
- Genetics,
- Genomics,
- Wastewater
Disciplines
Publication Date
July 18, 2023
DOI
10.1021/acsestwater.3c00314
Citation Information
Rochelle Holm, Petros Chigwechokha, Craig Kinnear, Anna M. Winters, et al.. "Promoting Surveillance in Sub-Saharan Africa: Moving to Wastewater and Environmental Genomic Surveillance Requires More Attention" ACS ES&T Water Vol. 3 Iss. 8 (2023) p. 1994 - 1996 ISSN: 2690-0637 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/rochelle-holm/61/