Newly promoted Associated Professor Sabiu Saheed of the Department of Biotechnology and Food Science at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) is using his expertise in molecular virology and genomic sequencing to fight diseases and outbreaks as part of continent-wide public health efforts.
At DUT, he leads the Computational Drug Discovery and Development Research Group that bioprospects for secondary metabolites against degenerative and microbial diseases. This is done to discover new small molecule targets. He is also interested in the molecular dynamics of enteric and respiratory viruses using whole-genome sequencing, in silico and metagenomic approaches.
Since 2022 Prof Saheed has also been a member of the continent-wide Vaccine Preventable Disease (VPD) Focus Group; one of four such expert groupings brought together last year to inform the work of the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Africa PGI), a unit of the African Union’s autonomous health body, the Africa Centre for Communicable and Preventable Diseases (Africa CDC).
At the beginning of March 2023, Prof Saheed and other experts who volunteer their time as part of these working groups met in Lusaka, Zambia. The epidemiologists, geneticists, bioinformatics specialists, public health experts, microbiologists, veterinarians, and others convened to discuss potential overlaps in their work, and to start finalising the roadmaps that they are drafting.
“The use of genomic surveillance as an important public health tool came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was used to screen for new variants and outbreaks, and so control and manage its spread. Researchers from Africa also rose to prominence when they were the first to note the Beta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, he said.
The experts – including epidemiologists, geneticists, bioinformatics specialists and public health experts – have been working on these since early 2022. They do so on behalf of the African Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Africa PGI), a unit of the African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) public health branch.
“The tailored roadmaps were expected by the end of June 2023. These will provide a framework for individual countries, regions, funders, partners, and key stakeholders to incorporate the genomics of multi-pathogen and priority diseases and other use cases into existing policy and routine disease surveillance systems. It will also guide the work of the Africa PGI and the Africa CDC,” added Prof Saheed.
He further added that the Africa PGI was launched in 2019, and with the outbreak of COVID-19 was ideally placed to strengthen the roll-out of genomic surveillance tools across the continent.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, less than 10 of the 55 AU Members States were able to do next-generation sequencing work on own soil. Today, around 40 African countries can on a molecular level monitor the pandemic and detect and track emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. This is largely thanks to the efforts of the Africa PGI unit, working closely with the World Health Organisation’s Africa Regional Office (WHO AFRO) and other partners, to provide appropriate hardware, software, and training to countries in different regions amid the pandemic.,” explained Prof Saheed.
Adding to the conversation was Dr Lui Riek, regional coordinator for Africa CDC’s Southern African Regional Collaborating Centre, in Lusaka.
“Those detections saved lives, strengthened the health sector of many countries, and brought a lot of confidence in the abilities of scientists from Africa. Seeing is believing. We now need to build on these efforts to secure Africa’s health sector, and to take existing and evolving pathogen genomic sequencing capabilities on the continent further. It depends on people like us to be uniquely part of this historic reality,” said Dr Riek.
About the VPD roadmap he is helping to draft, Prof Saheed commented: “These provide technical guidance and support to the Africa PGI and CDC about how sequencing data can be used to enable long-term prevention and control of VPD, strengthen knowledge through research and inform public health decision making at national, regional, and continental levels.
“This would in turn enhance VPD control strategies and inform the most effective way to detect and respond early to VPD outbreaks. This will mitigate the impact of diseases on a national security level, public health systems, and the economy,” he added.
Prof Saheed stated that the VPD Focus Group considers diseases such as rotavirus, measles, cholera, typhoid fever, malaria, Ebola, and polio which is led by Prof Saheed’s academic mentor, Prof Martin Nyaga, Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborative Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Pathogen Genomics in South Africa, and the Next-Generation Sequencing Unit of the University of the Free State.
“Thirty million cases of children suffering from vaccine-preventable diseases are reported in Africa every year. Around 500 000 children die each year because of these preventable illnesses,” says Prof Nyaga.
“If the desire is to effectively identify pathogens, track their transmission routes and control outbreaks, continuous genomic sequencing and surveillance must be embraced in Southern Africa region and indeed Africa, as being advocated for and championed by national and international organisations, including the Africa CDC,” notes Prof Saheed, who is currently participating in the National Department of Higher Education and Training’s Future Professors Programme.
Pictured: Prof Sabiu Saheed
Author: Engela Duvenage
