No date has yet been set for the recently-elected Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Jean Kaseya to take over his new tasks, said acting director Dr Ahmed Ogwell Ouma on Thursday.

But he promised that the transition period would be a smooth one, saying: “After the decision by the African Union summit, there are internal processes that continue to be done. And as soon as those have been completed, you will be hearing from us.

“Suffice to say that we are in a transition period and Africa CDC continues to work until the incoming leadership is in place,” Ouma told Health Policy Watch at a press briefing on Thursday.

Kaseya was electeed as Africa CDC’s new head, in late February on the sidelines of the 36th session of the African Union. A Democratic Republic of Congo national with a seasoned international health career, he beat 179 other candidates, including Ouma, who had been appointed as acting director following the departure of John Nkengasong in May 2022, to head the US President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Meanwhile, Ouma said that the agency has also extended its COVID-19 vaccination acceleration campaign, the Bingwa Initiative, which was due to end in April, until the end of 2023.

That comes even as multiple countries in eastern and southern Africa battle a prolonged cholera outbreak, which WHO has blamed on excessive flooding.

Launched in April 2022, the COVID-19 vaccine acceleration campaign originally aimed to have 100 million African citizens vaccinated by April 2023. But as that goal remains far from being achieved, Africa CDC is now also striving to expand the initiative’s scope, Ouma said.

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