Funder: Berlin University Alliance (BUA)

Project Period: January, 2022 – December, 2025

Research Team Members:

Dr. Michael Owusu (Principal Investigator)

Dr Augustina Sylverken (Co-PI)

Dumevi Rexford Mawunyo (Postdoc, Charite-Universitätsmedizin Berlin)

Phillip El-duah (Postdoc, Charite-Universitätsmedizin Berlin)

(This Project is a collaboration with Prof Richard Phillips’ Group)

Students enrolled:

George Agyei (PhD candidate)

Sherihanne Aryeetey (PhD candidate)

Collaborating Institutions

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Overview of the project

Industrialized countries are making significant investments in research to develop their epidemiological projection and decision-making capacities for pandemic management and preparedness. These include comprehensive surveys on the spread of infection and immunity, sequencing programs to record the circulating virus population, extensive programs to scale the need for health services with considerations of costs and benefits for pandemic and other health services, as well as socio-economic research programs to estimate the direct and indirect costs of pandemics for individuals, society and the economy. Due to the many structural and contextual differences, the value of applying knowledge gained from this research to countries in the global South remains limited.

Using Ghana as a country case for a lower middle-income country, this project seeks to develop frameworks, methods and conclusions that will inform policy directions on the future management of pandemics in Ghana. The project will aim at collecting epidemiological data and examining immunity characteristics to complete the lack of knowledge in the recent SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Ghana. It will also explore the potential role of zoonotic viruses in contributing to future pandemics in Ghana.

Expected Impact

The project will provide data on the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 over a one year period among populations in both rural and urban areas.