Collaboration for greater impact – PHA4GE Conference and IPSN Global Partners Forum 2025
More than 270 scientists, policy-makers, funders and public health experts from around the world attended the third International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) Global Partners Forum in Cape Town, South Africa from 27 to 29 October 2025. The forum was held jointly with the second Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) biennial conference and was co-hosted by the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence and WHO’s Regional Office for Africa
Strides in Integrating Genomics into Existing Public Health Frameworks
Six countries have so far launched their national strategies on genomics in Africa. Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Nigeria have already made strides in integrating genomics into their existing public health frameworks.
PHA4GE Wastewater Surveillance Guidance and Resources
PHA4GE’s Wastewater Surveillance Working Group provides open guidance and standards addressing surveillance strategies, data analysis, data sharing, and ethical considerations. These living resources support the application of state-of-the-art wastewater surveillance methods in public health practice.
Alan Christoffels: Building bioinformatics in Africa
We spoke to Christoffels about efforts to address the shortage of skills and capacity in Africa as a way of getting more BIPOC researchers into the field.
PHA4GE Wastewater Contextual Data Specification
PHA4GE has developed a wastewater contextual data specification to address challenges in harmonising, integrating, and reusing wastewater genomic surveillance data. The standard supports interoperable data exchange across surveillance systems and is extensible to broader environmental and One Health applications.
The PHA4GE Microbial Data-Sharing Accord: establishing baseline consensus microbial data-sharing norms to facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration
This publication introduces the PHA4GE Microbial Data-Sharing Accord, a set of consensus principles to guide the responsible secondary use of microbial data. The Accord provides clear, accessible guidance to promote trust, protect against misuse, and support evidence-based public health research and surveillance.
New virus-genome website seeks to make sharing sequences easy and fair
A new database for researchers to share the genomes of dangerous viruses promises to solve many of the problems that hamper existing alternatives.
PHA4GE celebrated Mandela Day with coding and disease literacy
The Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) marked this year’s Mandela Day by hosting 20 young learners from Heideveld with the hope of inspiring them to become tomorrow’s scientists.
African Scientists Find New Meaning in Genomics and Bioinformatics
From learning to use genome curation tools for depositing sequences on the African and global Pathogen Data Sharing and Archive platform to understanding data quality standards and formats, African scientists are gaining new insights from training courses offered by Africa CDC.
Data curation workshop seeks to strengthen sharing of data on disease-causing pathogens in Africa
As part of its programme to expand capacity in and support for pathogen genomics around Africa, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention hosted its first training in data curation, a pillar of modern data science.