The West Africa Health Organization (WAHO) and the World Health Organization in the African Region have mapped out key areas of collaboration to improve health in the West African sub-region, with emphasis placed on strengthening national level workforce with the technical, operational and logistical know-how to rapidly respond to health emergencies, surveillance, laboratory capacity on diagnosis and genomic sequencing along with data sharing.
Collaboration between the two organizations over the past five years has yielded significant milestones such as the improvements in epidemics surveillance and response achieved under the World Bank funded Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement (REDISSE) project established in 2017. The collaboration had also led to adoption and enforcement of tobacco control laws in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania and the Gambia, strengthening of regulatory capacity for food and non-alcoholic beverages in 11 ECOWAS Member States, and tobacco tax reforms in Cabo Verde and Nigeria.