At first, the Coronavirus appeared to spare the global south. Now it is spreading fast and the prognosis is grim.
Some stats to show the scale of the challenge: 1) Italy’s overwhelmed healthcare system has 41 doctors per 10000 people. The average in Africa is 2.
Some stats to show the scale of the challenge: 1) Italy’s overwhelmed healthcare system has 41 doctors per 10000 people. The average in Africa is 2.
2) In South Sudan, devastated by a five-year civil war, the ministry of health says it has just 24 isolation beds for a country of 13 million. The whole country... Malawi’s health ministry says there are about 25 isolation beds in public hospitals serving 17 million.
3) With some notable exceptions (Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal) the testing numbers are extremely low. Two African nations still have no capacity to test for the virus, the WHO says.
4) Cases in India & Pakistan are surging. Pakistani authorities tried to contain the spread of the infection across the border with Iran by building a quarantine camp, but it was quickly overwhelmed and 100s of infected people escaped and returned to villages across the country.
5) One vulnerability shared by most of these countries is giant urban slums where hundreds of millions live with poor sanitation and no plumbing. Basic practices to prevent the virus’s spread, such as regular hand-washing, can be impossible given the scarcity of clean water.
6) Mass urbanisation over the past 20 years means now more than 60% of Africa’s citizens live in cities. And 60% of those populations live in these informal settlements, according to the UN.
7) It isn’t inevitable that the coronavirus will have a worse impact in the developing world. There are factors which could mitigate its impact: Africa has world’s youngest population—average age 20—& there is data that suggests warmer climates could be more hostile to the virus
8) The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the continents poorest states, plagued by poor governance, massive corruption and insurgencies, is on the verge of declaring victory over the worlds second largest—and longest—Ebola outbreak.
9) But we are now entering a new phase where we will likely see the impact of the coronavirus through a different lens — societies where many people cannot forgo work without going hungry and where Goverments cannot marshal huge stimulus packages to ease the pain.
10) World leaders and development institutions are beginning to sound the alarm bells this week. Ethiopia’s president Abiy Ahmed perhaps put it best in an op-ed in the @FT yesterday: “If Covid-19 is not beaten in Africa it will return to haunt us all.” Think on that.
