Why Africa needs to battle unique challenges to keep coronavirus numbers down

by | May 5, 2020 | Research | 0 comments

This is an excerpt of an article written by Nazeem Muhajarine, Ejemai Eboreime, Jacob Albin Korem Alhassan, and Okikiolu Badejo. April 22, 2020

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus sweeps across the globe, African countries are bracing themselves for grave consequences. The projections released on April 17 include a worst-case scenario of a billion cases and 3.3 million deaths. This scenario is based on an assumption of no social distancing measures being taken. With intense social distancing, the estimates drop to to 122 million infections and 300,000 deaths.

These staggering estimates are a call to urgent action. The time to act in Africa is now, and to apply lessons from its own recent history of battling epidemics such as Ebola and HIV, as well as lessons from countries where COVID-19 outbreaks may now be peaking.

No one knows, though, how Africa is going to come through this pandemic. Compared to the rest of the world, especially Asia, the virus has arrived later, giving opportunity for real-time lessons that can help direct Africa’s battle.

We offer three recommendations in this regard:

● dissemination of accurate information

● a co-ordinated and equitable response from medical and civic communities, and governments

● ramping up testing capacity

For the full article, please click here https://theconversation.com/why-africa-needs-to-battle-unique-challenges-to-keep-coronavirus-numbers-down-136001

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