The African continent must plan effectively and without international aid for an effective response to disease outbreaks, because during pandemics Africa is "on its own," an international public health official argued Wednesday (12), reports MMO Portal.

Because assistance often never materializes, African nations must close gaps in their response to outbreaks, Ahmed Ogwell, acting head of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted as saying by the portal, hours after the first Ebola death was announced in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

"This is not the first outbreak of the Sudanese strain of the Ebola virus here in Africa and particularly in Uganda," he said, adding, "We, unfortunately, at this time do not have a rapid diagnosis for this particular strain, nor vaccines."

According to the Portal, Ogwell was speaking in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where African public health officials and others are meeting to plan cross-border cooperation in response to Ebola.

According to experts, the 54 African countries have not received adequate international support in recent health crises and have had difficulty obtaining Covid-19 vaccines.

Ogwell lamented the failure of the international community to help African countries improve their ability to test for monkey pox and control its spread.

He said that no help has arrived in Africa, where more monkeypox deaths have been reported this year than anywhere else in the world.

"Recently, during the pandemic, when we saw the number of smallpox cases growing here in Africa, we issued a global alert, but no help came," he noted.

He added, "In fact, today, as we look at the end of the pandemic, there is still no help coming to Africa for monkey pox. This means we need to get our reality check, and for us, the reality is that when a public health crisis is big, like the pandemic, Africa is on its own."

"Since Ebola is a priority disease for Africa, the absence of rapid diagnostics and the absence of a vaccine mean that we have a gap in how we prioritize our diseases and the tools we need to respond to them," Ogwell noted.

"As Africa, we now have to do things differently, bearing in mind that for most of the time we will be on our own," he reiterated.