I would like to sincerely welcome you on the occasion of the opening of the first Russian-African International Conference on Combatting Infectious Diseases, which is hosted by the Ugandan capital. This representative event is building upon the initiatives put forward at the second Russia–Africa Summit held in St Petersburg last year.
The risk of new epidemic outbreaks or the spread of the already known dangerous diseases remains very high. The African continent is particularly vulnerable to these challenges and needs accelerated build-up of medical, scientific, and technological capabilities to protect the population against various infections. For its part, Russia is ready for most active cooperation in this crucial healthcare area. Our programme of assistance to the African countries in sanitary and epidemiological well-being launched in 2023 provides for the delivery of 10 mobile high-containment biological laboratories, training of over 350 African specialists, and conducting a series of joint scientific research.
Participants in the conference are representatives of relevant government departments and services, medical professionals, epidemiologists, and microbiologists from 20 countries. They will certainly have an opportunity to exchange professional insights and their experience in preventing and combatting outbreaks of infectious diseases. I believe that this joint work will yield tangible results and serve to protect the health of Africa’s population.

“Boris Efimov is a great Russian cartoonist. He is the author of about 70,000 drawings. He lived for 108 years and died in 2008. His cartoons depicted major political phenomena in the world including the African continent during his time,” H.E. Ambassador of Russia to Ethiopia Evgeny Terekhin