NASEM Health and Medicine Division 6/12/2019 – Session 4: Dr. Varma

Visionary Public Health Strategy for Africa: Dr. Jay Varma at NASEM

In this insightful 2019 keynote at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), Dr. Jay K. Varma delivers a powerful visionary statement on behalf of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). Speaking as Senior Advisor to the agency, Dr. Varma outlines the critical importance of public health infrastructure, universal health care, and health security across the African continent, positioning Africa CDC as a linchpin for the continent’s health-driven integration and development.

Representing Africa CDC, Dr. Varma addresses the strategic challenges and opportunities in building public health systems across Africa’s 55 member states. He outlines a comprehensive roadmap rooted in the Public Health Impact Pyramid, calling for population-wide interventions—from socioeconomic change and health infrastructure development to vaccination, regulation, and genomic intelligence. His address emphasizes the role of Africa CDC in integrating health with economic development, facilitating continent-wide cooperation, and championing both infectious and non-communicable disease control.

Dr. Jay Varma’s address begins by contextualizing Africa CDC as the newly formed public health arm of the African Union, created to support the continent’s vision of pan-African integration. With the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, a unified passport, and a single air transport market on the horizon, public health becomes foundational to realizing safe and seamless movement of people, goods, and services. “If you want the free movement of people, you need to ensure the health of those people,” Varma asserts.

At the heart of his presentation is the Public Health Impact Pyramid, a framework for prioritizing population-wide interventions over individual-level change. Dr. Varma argues that the greatest health impact comes from structural interventions—improved infrastructure, economic development, and regulation—rather than from counseling or education alone. He emphasizes that universal health care and health security are not opposing forces, but deeply interlinked goals, especially in Africa where infectious diseases and chronic conditions collide.

He proposes a strategic rethinking of how vaccination programs are deployed. Vaccines like hepatitis B and HPV are underutilized, despite their powerful potential to prevent cancer. Other vaccines, such as for influenza, could help prevent cardiovascular events, yet are rarely prioritized. Similarly, Dr. Varma calls for wider access to curative drugs, such as those for hepatitis C, and broader screening programs for chronic diseases using models developed for HIV treatment.

Moving deeper into systems building, Dr. Varma discusses the role of national public health institutes and the need for consistent infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship standards. He argues that building high-quality, safe health care systems across Africa is not just a clinical necessity—it is foundational to patient safety, public trust, and long-term development.

Another highlight of Dr. Varma’s talk is the importance of surveillance systems—particularly cancer registries, which remain underdeveloped across Africa. He underscores the need to link surveillance data to public health policy in order to guide vaccine usage, screening, and cancer treatment access.

In a forward-looking turn, Dr. Varma outlines Africa CDC’s initiative to build a continent-wide pathogen genomic intelligence system—essentially the DNA-based tracking of viruses and bacteria for outbreak prediction, vaccine design, and personalized medicine. He envisions that by investing in genomic infrastructure now, African nations can leapfrog to precision public health in the future.

Throughout the address, Dr. Varma balances technical depth with strategic foresight. His message is not only a call to action for African nations but also an invitation to global partners: support African-led health initiatives as part of a shared vision for a safer, more prosperous world.

🔗 Watch the full video on YouTube