Sigh of relief for travellers via Zambia-Tanzania border as experts heighten emergency preparedness

Nakonde. Shalom Maregere, 26, is heading home to Mash West, Zimbabwe, after a vacation in Tanzania. As she navigates the busy Nakonde-Tunduma One-Stop Border Post into Zambia, she finds confidence in the visible health facilities and measures installed at the border post, but she will not leave without a word.

“I went through the handwashing facility, and I felt confident that we are being protected from dangerous diseases such as COVID and Mpox,” she says while checking her watch in the final Nakonde passport queue before catching her bus home.

Her last word? “I suggest that the queues be improved so that we don’t get crowded, which would help to prevent diseases like Mpox and COVID in the future.”

Maregere's comment about improving queues wasn't just a traveller's suggestion—it was an on-the-ground observation of a key public health challenge: reducing the risk of 'crowding and clustering,' which is a critical factor in infectious disease spread and a central concern for the health experts.

Witnessing the need for strong health security firsthand, Maregere and other travellers who frequently cross the Tunduma/Nakonde border rely on health checks.

It turns out that while Maregere was sharing her experience at the Tunduma-Nakonde crossing—one of East and Southern Africa's busiest—there was a parallel effort just a few meters away, happening alongside her journey.  A team of Zambia-Tanzania experts was already in Nakonde, too! 

The experts had just finished inspecting the checkpoints, facilities, and overall capacity of the border area and were now fully focused on a two-week cross-border engagement.

Their goal? To draft a comprehensive public health contingency plan specifically for the ports of entry, essentially prioritising the safety and health of travellers, just like Shalom.

One of the experts is Dr Mohammed Mohammed, a senior Medical Epidemiologist at the East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC)—an intergovernmental diplomatic health organisation leading the cross-border initiative under the World Bank-funded project, dubbed the AFE Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Resilience Program-MPA Project.

Mohammed emphasised the regional importance of the border initiative, noting that the Tunduma–Nakonde crossing is a "critical artery for East and Southern Africa." He explained that the strategic risk assessment is crucial for effective emergency preparedness.

“It’s giving us the tools to rapidly detect and respond to threats like COVID and Mpox. This is about establishing a shared commitment to health security and protecting our travellers,’’ he noted, briefly after conducting the meeting with experts, ranging from environmental health officers, clinicians, port-health officers, veterinary scientists and government representatives from Tanzania and Zambia.

Through the cross-border activity, ECSA-HC is collaborating with the Governments of Zambia and Tanzania, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in a shared commitment to strengthen border health systems, ensuring they can effectively detect, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies in full compliance with the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005).

And here’s the best part: all that intensive work is expected to pay off with some really tangible results. Once the initiative is successfully completed, it will deliver several impactful outcomes, including a formal Risk Assessment Report and tailored Multi-Hazard Contingency Plans specifically for both Tunduma and Nakonde.

They’ll also develop practical Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for emergency response. Crucially, the whole exercise is designed to lead to significantly strengthened cross-border coordination and better overall compliance with the International Health Regulations (IHR) between Zambia and Tanzania.

Ultimately, this major step is all about making the border health systems across the entire ECSA region resilient, prepared, and expertly coordinated.

Beyond Diseases

Dr Remidius Kakulu, Principal Epidemiologist from Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, says that previous planning primarily focused on disease-related hazards.

"The plan we have developed is going beyond that, to focus on non-disease hazards such as chemical hazards, motor traffic crashes, vehicles carrying explosives, floods and fire outbreaks."

This collaborative, in-country development process fosters strong ownership.

"These efforts will eventually pay off," Dr Kakulu noted, "because now we have a plan that was developed locally and collaboratively, so there is a high sense of ownership. We are using tools that were developed by the WHO."

The final phase involves high-level political backing to ensure the plans become reality: "What follows is a high-level engagement with relevant government decision makers, the signing of the document, and commitment for implementation," he concluded.

Tackling the unseen risks

The human face of border health security, represented by travellers like Maregere, is just one half of the equation. According to frontline health experts who were involved in the cross-border meeting in Nakonde, the risks while crossing the border are often unseen—but could be stopped through heightening vigilance and control measures. This is the essential science driving the joint regional assessment led by ECSA-HC.

Luwisha Muyoba, the Surveillance Port Health Officer for the Nakonde-Tunduma Border Post in Zambia, explains the challenge of vectors in regional transport:

"The people who know borders are me and you. But the mosquitoes know no borders."

Emphasising why the cross-border meeting was key for pandemic preparedness and health security, Muyoba explains that without proper control measures like spraying buses and trucks with chemicals, vectors can easily move across vast distances while on the buses or trucks.

This creates a critical risk of disease transmission, such as the Aedes mosquito carrying yellow fever from one country, like Tanzania, to travellers heading to another, like Zimbabwe.

Beyond controlling vectors, the rigorous health checks directly support regional economic stability. Muyoba emphasised the role of healthy travellers in commerce:

“We are facilitating safe trade... food products being transported from one country to another in this region must be carried by safe travellers such as truck drivers, or else they might end up sick and the food consignments might end up not being cleared at the border.”