Launch of phase 2 of the Taabo health monitoring project _CoDuBu2

The CoDuBu 2 project, which got underway on Tuesday December 17, will be implemented in the Taabo department.

And that's two for the CoDuBu (Co-occurrence of dual disease burden) project. This health surveillance program, which has been running in Taabo since 2017, entered its second phase on Tuesday December 17, with the main aim of studying and understanding the correlation between infectious diseases (malaria and helminthiasis) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension (Hta), diabetes, dyslipidemia, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic kidney disease and age-related phenotypes.

CoDuBu 2, officially launched by the prefect of the Taabo department, André Martin Kakou, will be implemented on a sample of 1,000 people in Taabo-Cité, in urban areas, and in Amani-Menou and Tokohiri in rural areas.

According to André Kakou, this program “is a study that will contribute to improving the quality of care and better medical follow-up by strengthening the capacities of health personnel. The population will also be made aware of the correlation and the importance of knowing how to behave to avoid the disease”. The prefectoral authority also points out that “thanks to CoDuBu 2, a biobank will be created”, of worldwide interest.

For Dr. Dao Daouda, Deputy Director General of the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques (CSRS), CoDuBu 2 will go beyond neglected tropical diseases, to focus on the lifestyles of target populations. “For this phase, we'll be talking about diabetes and hypertension. These are diseases that kill a lot of people these days, and in silence. We're going to try and get concrete, objective data on a sample of people in Taabo”, said the CSRS's second-in-command. He added that this data would enable decision-makers and health authorities to develop appropriate response strategies. “Our ambition is to make Taabo the first national health observatory. Work is already underway,” concludes Dao Daouda.

The project's kingpin, Prof. Nicole Probst, in turn stressed the need to better treat chronic diseases in people who are aging and developing these pathologies at a higher frequency. “We need to understand the risk factors in order to prevent and treat patients better,” she declared.

The CoDuBu project is implemented by the Site de surveillance démographique et sanitaire (Hdss), a CSRS entity.

Germain GABO (Special envoy to Taabo)