Launch of the MUKET Consortium
Launch of the MUKET Consortium: Climate-Informed One Health Surveillance & AI-Enabled Predictive Early Warning for Arboviral Diseases in Africa
Today marks a significant milestone in African public health: the inauguration of the MUKET Consortium, bringing together Mozambique, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania with, Africa CDC, and global partners.
MUKET’s mission is to Connect human, animal, vector, laboratory, genomic, climate, and environmental intelligence to strengthen early detection, prediction, and response.
Opening the event, Dr. Getachew Tollera, Deputy Director General of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), underscored the urgency of the moment, emerging and re-emerging arboviral diseases, driven by climate variability, flooding, drought, and displacement, pose a growing threat to health systems, livelihoods, and economic resilience across the continent.
Dr. Getachew mentioned – “African data generate African intelligence. African science drives African innovation. African institutions lead African solutions.”
Dr. Getachew indicated that Technology—genomics, GIS, remote sensing, climate science, and AI, is the means. Better public health outcomes are the destination.The success of MUKET will be measured not only in scientific outputs, but also by the capacity built, strengthened institutions, improved decisions, and the protected communities.
The pathway of MUKET is to:- Detect → Characterise → Integrate → Predict → Verify → Warn → Act → Learn → Scale.
From the Ministry of Health Prof. Aster Tsegaye, stressed that infectious diseases and their vectors cross national borders, making regional cooperation essential. She also called for stronger implementation of the One Health approach and greater involvement of social scientists in understanding community values, culture and behavior during public health responses.
The National Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Technical Advisor, Lead Principal Investigator and Consortium Coordinator of the MUKET Project, Dr. Eshetu Gadisa from EPHI, presented the vision, rationale, objectives and strategic value of the initiative. His presentation highlighted the importance of climate-informed One Health surveillance and the use of artificial intelligence and predictive technologies to strengthen early detection and response to arboviral disease threats across Africa.
The MUKET Project will use artificial intelligence, machine learning and geographic information systems to develop models capable of forecasting the timing and location of arboviral disease risks. It will also strengthen laboratory and genomic capacity to characterize pathogens, trace viral lineages and detect emerging changes.
Finally Dr. Getachew reaffirmed EPHI’s commitment to the partnership.
Finally Dr. Getachew reaffirmed EPHI’s commitment to the partnership.