AFRICAN LESSONS FROM CORONAVIRUS

AFRICAN LESSONS FROM CORONAVIRUS

Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) has brought the world to its knees. At the time of writing, 590,038 people have been infected and 26,939 people have died. Flights have been grounded, borders closed, and economies brought to a standstill. Where previous generations had the world wars, Coronavirus is proving to be the great battle of our time.

The struggle against the virus has put Africa in a unique position. After decades of difficult and sometimes discriminatory travel measures for people travelling on African passports, multiple African countries have shut their borders to Westerners. Unlike Ebola, Malaria and HIV, Covid-19 is not a pandemic that the media parades with images of African villages.

In comparison to the rest of the world, Africa as of now is relatively unscathed by the virus. Compared to the United States, China and Italy’s number of cases which all exceed 80,000, Africa’s 54 countries have reported a total 3,426 confirmed cases2. Various theories have been offered to explain the slow spread of the virus in Africa – some have claimed the virus does survive as long in hot climates and others have said that Africa’s lack of connectivity has reduced opportunities transmission.

Whatever the reason, the rapid spread of Coronavirus around the world reminds us of Africa’s dangerously lacking infrastructure. Although strides have been made such as Gabon extending healthcare coverage to all of its citizens in 2008*, Central Africa, where CMO London does most of its work, has some of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per person in the world.

The rapid rise of Coronavirus has shown that preparation now is needed as we do not know what will happen tomorrow. So far, Africa has been spared the worse of the Coronavirus pandemic, but we should still learn lessons from it. When the transmission of the virus eventually slows around the world, countries will set about strengthening their healthcare systems to ensure their future resilience. Africa, the population centre of tomorrow, must take every necessary measure because next time, we might not be so lucky.

*all numbers correct as of 27/03/2020.