How will Africa deal with coronavirus?
Pandemic is reaching a continent with poor public healthcare, weak infrastructure and an inability to enforce lockdowns.
It has taken coronavirus longer to reach Africa than other parts of the world. But experts are warning of a possible large-scale outbreak on the world’s poorest continent of 1.2 billion people.
Africa is still reporting low numbers of cases compared with the US, Europe and China, but that could change fast as coronavirus has reached almost every African country, with the infection rate and the number of deaths increasing.
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If Europe and the United States are struggling to contain the pandemic, the potential consequences across the continent are possibly devastating, if not catastrophic.
For example, Mali has 56 ventilators for a population of 17 million.
For most African countries, the question is not how and when do we test – as at the moment they simply cannot – but rather, when do people start dying?
Presenter: Peter Dobbie
Guests:
Abdulsalami Nisidi – Provost of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Africa, Nigeria
David Heymann – Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
David Owiro – Founder and principal consultant at the Africa Development think-tank
Published On 7 Apr 2020