The Pasteur Center of Cameroun (CPC) was inaugurated in 1959. As a public administrative institution of the Ministry of Public Health with financial autonomy, the CPC is a member of the Pasteur Institutes International Network (PIIN).
The CPC has been headquartered in Yaoundé since 1959. It opened a branch in Garoua in 1985 and a site in Douala in 2004.
Divisions
The CPC has four departments:
- The Scientific Department, with teams carrying out research and public health and water/food quality control activities,
- The Medical Department, in charge of routine medical biology, vaccination and training activities,
- The Administrative and Financial Department, which handles all support services (quality assurance, financial control and accounting, supplies and inventory, biomedical engineering, and human resources),
- The Delegation Department, which oversees the CPC branch in Garoua.
Facilities
Our teams work in specialized laboratories to target the most endemic pathogens:
- 10 BSL-2 facilities
- 5 BSL-2+ facilities
- 1 BSL-3 facility
Our core activities take place primarily in the ten biosafety level (BSL)-2 facilities. The additional five BSL-2+ facilities, which are equipped with unidirectional air flow, are designed for investigating selected epidemic-causing pathogens, such as polioviruses, rabies virus, arboviruses, human influenza viruses, and certain fungi.
We host the only BSL-3 facility in Cameroon equipped with two class II biosafety cabinets and one class III biosafety cabinet. The BSL-3 unit is used to diagnose high-consequence pathogens such as arboviruses and those causing multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, avian influenza, monkey pox, and viral hemorrhagic fever.
Laboratory activities
Objectives
We contribute to fighting infectious diseases through four distinct but highly complementary missions:
- Providing services to patients (medical analysis and vaccination) and to industry (food and water quality control),
- Ensuring surveillance and control of epidemic diseases,
- Conducting health-related operational research,
- Training undergraduates, graduates and post-graduates.
We apply our scientific expertise and public health interventions to address the needs of the Ministry of Public Health and other regional health agencies.
Expertise
Since its creation in 1959, the CPC has built its expertise in microbiological procedures ranging from classical techniques (microcopy, serology, cultures and neutralization assays) to modern technology and techniques (molecular biology, sequence analyses and pathogen profiling). Thanks to this expertise, the CPC has been recognized at both the national and international levels as the national and/or regional reference laboratory for the surveillance of 27 different infectious diseases.
Laboratory activities
The CPC's laboratory activities include:
- Routine activities related to medical biology, microbiological and physico-chemical surveillance of food/water,
- Follow-up of assays for patients suffering from chronic disease, as well as those receiving long-term treatment,
- Surveillance of epidemic-causing pathogens through laboratory detection/confirmation of the following diseases: cholera , measles, yellow fever, poliomyelitis, human and animal rabies, human and animal flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), invasive bacterial meningitis, viral hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola, Marburg, Rift valley, Lassa, Crimean-Congo, and West Nile), chikungunya, dengue, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV infection, Buruli ulcer, leprosy, monkey pox, anthrax, and infections by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.
Biomedical research on these key topics is the major human health priority in Cameroon and Central Africa.