There are a lot of conflicting messages emerging now over whether African governments are sufficiently prepared to deal with the arrival of Novel Coronavirus should a confirmed case be detected on the continent.
It’s important to note that although public health authorities in a number of countries have quarantined hundreds of people who have displayed symptoms of the dangerous virus, there are still no confirmed cases.
That said, public health agencies in every country on the continent, working closely with both the World Health Organization and the Africa Center for Disease Control, are doing what they can do to enhance screenings at ports of entry, create dedicate quarantine zones in hospitals and quickly ramp up testing labs to be able to quickly determine if someone with the flu is actually infected with Novel Coronavirus.
At this time, only a handful of countries have testing facilities but the World Health Organization says that it hopes by the end of the month 36 countries will be able to conduct coronavirus tests.
While all of this activity is indeed encouraging, a growing number of African and international experts worry that the majority of African public health often systems struggle to provide basic levels of care, much less be able to confront a potential pandemic that has effectively brought the world’s second-largest economy to its knees.
But What About Ebola?
Defenders of Africa’s preparedness often point to how the Ebola crisis was brought under control as evidence of how different public health agencies in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were all able to effectively contain a larger outbreak
What these proponents don’t say is that, though, is that the Ebola outbreak was only brought under control after a massive intervention by the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom who spent $3.611 billion to bring the 2014 outbreak under control, according to figures from the U.S. CDC.
There is no indication at this time that populist governments in Washington, London and elsewhere will be prepared to spend that kind of money again to stop a viral contagion in Africa.
Why We Should be Concerned
What keeps people like Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, up at night is that if an outbreak of Novel Coronavirus starts in Africa, much as it has in China, the continent’s defenses are just not strong enough to stop it from ripping through vast populations in countries with poorly-equipped hospitals and unreliable power supplies among other public health challenges. “Infection control in Africa is very, very poor,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Furthermore, the fact that Novel Coronavirus can infect someone through airborne transmission rather than bodily fluids, as was the case with Ebola, increases the risk of contagion.
Prepared or Not Prepared? Depends on Who You Speak With
- PREPARED: “The head of the U.S. government’s international task force on the coronavirus said on Thursday that many African countries have made “excellent progress” in preparing for an outbreak of the new disease.” (DAILY NATION)
- NOT PREPARED: “We’re definitely not prepared. If we had a couple of cases, it would spread very quickly,” said physiotherapist Fundi Sinkala at the Sino-Zambian Friendship hospital in the northern city of Kitwe. “We’re doing the best we can with what resources we have,” he added. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
There’s an interesting convergence taking place between Chinese propaganda outlets and some proponents of the “Africa is prepared” side of the debate who are very sensitive to international (read U.S. and European) stakeholders who contend that African public health systems are not sufficiently prepared for a coronavirus outbreak.
Both are very sensitive to Western criticism of Africa and that the suggestion Africa will not be able to contain an outbreak of coronavirus “perpetuates negative stereotypes of Africa as an incapable continent,” said Nairobi-based CGTN presenter Beatrice Marshall in a recent exchange on Twitter.
