Learning from South Africa’s Exemplary Progress in Advance Warning and Response
Research Brief
South Africa is an upper-middle-income country facing a wide range of epidemic‑prone and climate‑sensitive health threats that place sustained pressure on communities and the health system. These include arboviral, water‑borne, and respiratory diseases shaped by climate variability and environmental change, with impacts across both human and animal populations. Over the past two decades, South Africa has built a network of surveillance platforms, climate science institutions, and One Health collaborations that together form an advance warning and response (AW&R) ecosystem for infectious diseases. Key highlights of South Africa’s success in AW&R systems include:
- Cross-sector One Health surveillance that supports earlier warnings of emerging threats
- Innovative surveillance approaches that extend AW&R capabilities into data-limited settings
- Strong institutional laboratory capacity
- Decentralized decision-making structures
The country’s exemplary practices in detecting and responding to such diseases offer valuable insights for other countries facing similar challenges.