Africa, home to the world’s second-largest population of approximately 1.3 billion, grapples with significant challenges in meeting its medical needs, particularly in accessing quality healthcare services and products. The continent faces a continuous onslaught of emerging infectious diseases, exacerbating the strain on its already fragile public health infrastructure. The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the urgency to build local vaccine production capacity and strengthen the health infrastructure in general. The risks associated with a heavy reliance on imported vaccines were exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating the need to nurture and strengthen the local manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutic biologics. Various initiatives addressing training, manufacturing, and regulatory affairs are underway, and these require increasing dedicated and purposeful financial investment. Building vaccine manufacturing capacity requires substantial investment in training and infrastructure. This manuscript examines the current state of education in vaccinology and related sciences in Africa. It also provides an overview of the continent’s efforts to address educational needs in vaccine development and manufacturing. Additionally, it evaluates the initiatives aimed at strengthening vaccine education and literacy, highlighting successful approaches and ongoing challenges. By assessing the progress made and identifying the remaining obstacles, this review offers insights into how Africa can enhance its vaccine manufacturing capacity to respond to vaccine-preventable disease challenges.

Background: Urinary tract infection is one of the most frequently acquired infections in both community and hospitals and is common among the adolescents and the old genders. Aim: To determine the prevalence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteriuria among pregnant women attending secondary health hospitals in Ilorin, Nigeria Study Design: An experimental study which involve a random selection of consented pregnant women. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Biosciences and Biotechnology Kwara State University Malete between January 2018 and June 2019. Methodology: In this study, a total of 856 pregnant women mid stream clean catch early morning voided urine samples for two consecutive days (383 of the samples were collected from Sobi Specialist Hospital, 278 from Adewole Cottage Hospital and 195 collected from Ajikobi Cottage Hospital) were randomly screened for the presence of Staphylococcus aureus bacteriuria using standard microbiological procedures such as growth on mannitol salt agar, Gram reaction, catalase and coagulase tests. The Kirby–Bauer disk diffusion method was used to determine the antibiotic sensitivity profile of S. aureus isolated using oxoid antibiotic discs. Results: Out of 856 samples screened 56 samples (6.5%) showed significant Staphylococcus aureus bacteriuria, 16- 25 years has a prevalence rate of 5.6%, 26- 35 years (5.8%) while 35-45 years have the prevalence rate of 10.9%. A total of 7 (12.5%) methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus were isolated. Antibiotic sensitivity profile shows that 26.8% were resistance to gentamicin, 44.6% to tetracycline, 19.6% to chloramphenicol, 33.9 % to erythromycin, 67.9% to amoxicillin, 32% to augmentin, 12.6% to ceftriaxone, 5.3% to ciprofloxacin and 100% susceptibility to both nitrofurantoin and vancomycin. Conclusion: The study shows the high prevalence of MRSA and high susceptibility of nitrofurantoin and vancomycin to all the MRSA isolated.

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant global health threat, requiring effective antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and surveillance systems. At the University Teaching Hospital of Butare (CHUB) in Rwanda, a baseline Laboratory Assessment of Antibiotic Resistance Testing Capacity (LAARC) identified critical gaps in the Laboratory Information System (LIS), including low capture rates for culture observation (60%) and AST data (25%), no standardization of AST panels (0%), and limited cumulative antibiogram generation (17%). Existing AMR surveillance platforms, such as the Information System for Monitoring Antimicrobial Resistance by the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Surveillance of Resistance to Antimicrobial Agents (WHONET), and the District Health Information System, operate as standalone systems separate from clinical workflows, which limits their real-time clinical utility. Objective: This study aimed to develop an enhanced, web-based LIS integrated within routine clinical care to improve AST reliability, enable real-time AMR surveillance at CHUB, and provide a scalable model for subnational and national surveillance networks in resource-limited settings, supporting antimicrobial stewardship. Methods: We developed an enhanced LIS using the OpenClinic GA, the current open-source hospital information system at CHUB, integrating Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) guidelines, and leveraging metadata from the AMR for R package, WHONET resources, and EUCAST Expert Rules. An agile development approach was used, incorporating a custom database schema, Java-based application programming interfaces (APIs), and web-based user interfaces. The system was designed to support minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and disk diffusion (DD) methods, automate result interpretation with color-coded outputs, WHO Access, Watch, Reserve (AWaRe)–based cascade reporting, and enable data export to WHONET for global surveillance. Results: The enhanced LIS improved AST data capture and standardization, providing reliable, automated result interpretation and real-time AMR surveillance capabilities. The system’s web-based architecture enables scalability through centralized deployment, allowing multiple facilities simultaneous access. Unlike standalone surveillance tools, the enhanced LIS integrates AST within electronic medical records, maintaining clinical information continuity from specimen registration through result reporting. The system supports immediate clinical decision through AWaRe–based cascade reporting, and automated resistance phenotype detection, followed by standardized WHONET-compatible exports for public health surveillance. Conclusions: This scalable, LIS model demonstrates the feasibility of implementing standards-based AMR informatics in resource-limited settings. By embedding surveillance within clinical workflows rather than treating it as a separate downstream activity, the system maximizes data quality and clinical relevance while minimizing staff burden. The centralized web-based architecture provides inherent scalability from facility to national levels, eliminating data fragmentation and ensuring metadata consistency across networks. Long-term sustainability requires continuous user training, designated personnel for metadata maintenance, local IT capacity building, and funding mechanisms beyond donor dependency. This model provides a practical roadmap for national digital stewardship programs, supporting both immediate patient care and long-term public health surveillance goals.

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common type of infections worldwide, and this is usually preceded by asymptomatic significant bacteriuria (ASB). The emergence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria responsible for UTI makes this entity of public challenge, which has been fueled by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. This study determined the prevalence of ASB and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of bacteria isolated from urine samples of selected HIV-infected patients in Ilorin, Nigeria. Methodology: A cross-sectional study of 300 randomly selected HIV-positive patients from Sobi Specialist and Civil Service hospitals in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria, was conducted from January to March 2019. Clean-catch midstream urine samples were aseptically collected from each selected participant, cultured on CLED and Blood agar plates, and incubated aerobically at 37oC for 24 hours. The bacterial growth on the culture plates were identified using standard microbiological techniques. The Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method was used to determine the antibiotic sensitivity of the bacterial isolates against a panel of antibiotics. Results: The overall prevalence of ASB among the participants was 22.3%. Staphylococcus aureus (41.8%, 28/67), Escherichia coli (25.4%, 17/67), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (17.9%, 12/67) were the predominant bacterial isolates. Staphylococcus aureus was resistant to amoxicillin-clavulanate (64.3%), ceftriaxone (53.6%), ciprofloxacin (64.3%), and nalidixic acid (71.4%); E. coli was also resistant to amoxicillin-clavulanate (70.6%), ceftriaxone (53.6%), ciprofloxacin (52.9%) and nalidixic acid (64.7%); and K. pneumoniae was moderately resistant to amoxicillinclavulanate (50.0%) and resistant to ciprofloxacin (58.3%) and nalidixic acid (75.0%). Multidrug resistance (MDR) was observed in 40.8% of the isolates. Conclusion: The isolation rate of high MDR bacteria highlights the growing challenge of ASB and UTIs that are becoming increasingly difficult to treat with available antibiotics. Health professionals should be aware of regional resistance pattern to consider in the current empirical antimicrobial therapy for ASB and UTIs among HIV-infected patients. Strategies to mitigate spread of resistance are urgently needed in the study area.

Africa, home to the world's second-largest population of approximately 1.3 billion, grapples with significant challenges in meeting its medical needs, particularly in accessing quality healthcare services and products. The continent faces a continuous onslaught of emerging infectious diseases, exacerbating the strain on its already fragile public health infrastructure. The emergence of SARS-Cov2 has further exposed the deficiencies in Africa's public health response, ranging from limited diagnostic capabilities to difficulties in vaccine distribution. Compounding these challenges is vaccine hesitancy, which is prevalent in many regions due to varying levels of understanding and trust regarding vaccines. The disparities in vaccine literacy across the continent stem from a complex interplay of factors, including low literacy rates and a history of medical exploitation and misinformation campaigns. These factors have led to a pervasive distrust in medical institutions and healthcare providers among certain African communities. Despite concerted efforts by national governments, private entities, and international partners to address these challenges and improve vaccine literacy, significant hurdles persist. This manuscript examines the current state of education in vaccinology and related sciences in Africa, as well as the continent's efforts to address educational needs in vaccine development and manufacturing. It evaluates initiatives aimed at strengthening vaccine education and literacy, highlighting successful approaches and ongoing challenges. By assessing the progress made and identifying remaining obstacles, this review offers insights into how Africa can enhance its capacity in vaccinology and accelerate its contributions to global health security.

This study reports the draft genome sequence of Staphylococcus aureus strain MB02, a multidrug-resistant isolate recovered from a cesarean wound of a 32-year-old pregnant woman in Ogbomoso, Nigeria.