• The new Zoonotic and Emerging Infectious Diseases Training, a PhD Programme, will be based at the University of Nairobi, Washington State University Global Health Kenya, and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
• Apart from academic supervisors, the students will also be assigned mentors who will ensure that they learn much more beyond academic work.
Image: STEPHEN ATARIKO
A team of 10 doctors and veterinarians will train in emerging infectious diseases in an effort to help detect future pandemics.
The new Zoonotic and Emerging Infectious Diseases Training, a PhD Programme, will be based at the University of Nairobi, Washington State University Global Health Kenya, and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
The 10 beneficiaries will be conducting ongoing research at Kemri, the University of Nairobi’s Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases and the Kenyan Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The National Institutes of Health, a United States-based agency responsible for medical research that informs public health around the world, provided $1 million (about Sh110 million) to senior professors Kariuki Njenga and Walter Jaoko to implement the programme.
It was introduced following the outbreak of Covid-19, a disease that was transmitted to humans from animals.
The programme will address a significant need by strengthening in-country research capacity to detect and respond to zoonotic diseases, deadly viral diseases that originate from animals.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 75 per cent of infectious diseases that are currently threatening humankind such as Ebola and Covid-19 come from animals.
The programme's academic coordinator John Gachohi said it is distinguished from others because of its multidisciplinary approach and emphasis on field experience.
“Apart from the academic supervisors, the students will also be assigned mentors who will ensure they learn much more beyond academic work of what it is to be an infectious diseases scientist, as they will gain skills like how to apply for funding and managing their projects,” Dr Gachohi said.
The cohort will be among the few researchers trained on the continent in One Health, an emerging discipline in science that tackles infectious diseases by approaching public health as linked to humans, animals, and their shared environment.
This applied expertise is critical for Kenya.
A 2016 report by the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that a new zoonosis is discovered every four months all over the world often in bat-filled trees, camel barns and other places.
Njenga, a professor of virology and one of the principal researchers in charge of the programme, said Kenyans come close to these viruses every day and science needs to be prepared when those encounters will cause disease.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics recorded that Kenya’s population was 47.6 million in 2019, marking rapid growth in the last decade.
With a growing population and need for proteins, as well as places to live, people are thronging urban centres where the demand for food and housing is high.
The increased demand is forcing farmers to grow more crops and raise food animals.
“The activities such as farming and construction are making Kenyans push closer and closer to animal habitat, which forces animals to leave those forests and barns possibly with deadly infectious diseases, and we better be prepared with well-trained researchers who can save people and populations when that happens,” Prof Kariuki said.
Apart from the new viruses, there are neglected diseases that kill people.
Andrew Karani, a medical doctor and one of the students, said as a young medical doctor in the northeastern part of the country, he encountered a lot of patients with Brucellosis and Dengue Fever.
“They all present with the same symptoms, so I am trying to understand what is it about Kenyans, or perhaps we do get the disease but haven’t identified it properly in humans and assumed it is something else,” Dr Karani said.
He is now investigating why another coronavirus called Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS CoV), which is deadlier than Covid-19 and comes from camels, has killed many people in the Middle East, yet no death has been recorded in Kenya even though the disease is also in camels in Kenya.