2 November 2022, Nairobi - In order to foster cross-country signal management and deliver scientific recommendations towards the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) programme hosted the first Face-to-Face Joint Signal Management (JSM) meeting in Nairobi, Kenya since the pandemic from 31 October to 2 November 2022.

The Face-to-Face JSM meeting had representatives from the AU-3S programme’s UK technical partner, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA), representatives from the pilot country -Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa - National Regulation Authorities (NRA) as well as the AU-3S in attendance.

The JSM Group used the platform provided to share valuable information on best practices, experiences and knowledge gathered from their involvement in casualty assessments. This Group constitutes of safety experts from each of the AU-3S pilot countries. The multi-country group is supported by the JSM Secretariat, which assesses safety issues on Adverse Events following Immunization as well as Adverse Events of Special Interest. The findings of the JSM secretariat inform the in-depth discussions that the JSM Group has.  Prof. Hannalie Meyer, current Chair of the JSM Secretariat noted that, "The success of the AU-3S programme starts and ends with the JSM Group. That is where the data is assessed and monitored for the different populations in Africa.”

The AU-3S programme’s long-term objective is to operate at a continental level. With this target, in March 2022, Kenya was onboarded and introduced as the newest and latest pilot country in the programme. Against this backdrop, the expansion of the programme, with Kenya used as a baseline for the programme increase, has led to a deeper dive by the JSM members on the expansion plans of the programme to achieve more regional diversity whilst cementing the proof of concept of the programme. The recommendations drawn from the face-to-face meeting will craft a way forward for the programme whilst informing regulation and signal management policies in the context of Africa.

“The amount of data from our individual countries may not be sufficient to identify safety issues, however, with unified effort to combine all of the data, we will have the potential to quickly identify signals and act on them in a timely manner,” mentioned Dr Fred Siyoi, Kenya Pharmacy and Poisons Board CEO during his remarks. 

Sustained capacity strengthening is fundamental towards acquiring knowledge on evolving signal management approaches. The AU-3S programme organised a refresher training on causality and signal management during the meeting for the benefit of the Group and secretariat members to enable more effective signal management activities going forward.

AU-3S programme continues to work closely with the National Regulatory Authorities and Expanded Programme on Immunization to ensure the efficiency of safety surveillance systems of medical products, with a current focus on COVID-19 vaccines, whilst exploring programme expansion to more countries and additional medical products in the next implementation phase.

For more information, contact:

Ms Victoria Nambasa, Senior Programme Officer for Health Products, African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) programme

Ms. Modupe Adeyemo, Programme Officer, African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) programme

Media Contact:

Ms. Nqobile Zwane, Public Relations Officer, African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) programme