Top African biomedical scientist and inventor, Dr. Dougbeh Christopher Nyan is in Abuja, Nigeria this week, participating in a special scientific workshop on the Lassa fever International Conference Supplement. The meeting is a follow-up to the ECOWAS-WAHO International Conference on Lassa Fever held in Abidjan, La Côte D’Ivoire in September 2025.
The WAHO workshop brings together a selected group of scientific experts from the West African region to analyze the volume of scientific evidence including laboratory, surveillance, policy materials, and operational experiences from across the region that were generated from the Lassa Fever International Conference and reduced into scientific manuscripts for publications.
In collaboration with coalition partners, Dr. Nyan and other experts are also tasked by ECOWAS-WAHO to mentor and guide authors in ensuring that these valuable contributions on outbreak detection, coordinated surveillance, and public health research are documented and disseminated through peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.
According to the ECOWAS-WAHO communication, “the workshop aims to review, harmonize, and finalize all conference supplement manuscripts by addressing outstanding technical, scientific, and editorial comments, ensuring compliance with journal requirements, and developing a roadmap for their submission, revision, and dissemination.”
During the workshop, Dr. Nyan delivered a presentation on the techniques of scientific writing, following one on established guidelines, standards, and adherence to publication ethics in scientific and public health research.
Lassa is a haemorrhagic fever virus that is endemic in many countries of West Africa, including Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, among others. The disease is spread by certain rodents and there is no approved vaccine for this infection. There are many candidate products that are undergoing clinical trials as scientists are racing to produce one.
An accomplished infectious diseases scientist and inventor, Dr. Nyan participated in the launch of the 2025 ECOWAS-WAHO Lassa Fever International Conference report.
He also advocated that national governments support research and development projects of home-grown scientists in the area of vaccines and diagnostics production for various infectious diseases like Lassa fever, Mpox, Ebola, and Malaria.
