Nearly 1,000 health workers are infected with Covid-19 across the continent, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa says.
“We are very concerned that almost 1,000 African health workers have been infected with Covid-19. We know that most African countries already have a severe shortage of health care workers. And when our front line workers fall ill or are absent from work, communities don’t have access to essential services like immunizations, safe deliverers and treatment for chronic and infectious diseases,” Dr. Moeti said today during a briefing.
Dr. Amit Thakker, President of the Africa Healthcare Federation, said to address the global shortages of personal protection equipment (PPE), countries across Africa are “repositioning and refashioning” their businesses. “Many manufactures who never made PPE are now making PPE,” he said.
Some factories in Kenya have already put up machinery to produce masks, gowns and hand sanitizers.
“I see that countries are making a lot of effort to invest in overcoming the situation,” Dr. Moeti said.
“When we came out of that devastating Ebola outbreak, it left in those countries some determination to start out better,” Moeti said. Sierra Leone and Liberia who were devastated by Ebola, have confronted coronavirus head-on.
“That painful learning really enabled to them start off at a different level, with a different outlook on how to invest,” Moeti said.
“I have a lot of faith in resilience of African people,” she added.
There are currently more than 51,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,000 people have lost their lives in Africa.
