{"id":8916,"date":"2020-04-02T03:19:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T00:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=8916"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:58","slug":"fragile-african-health-systems-face-covid-19-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/04\/02\/fragile-african-health-systems-face-covid-19-catastrophe\/","title":{"rendered":"Fragile African Health Systems Face COVID-19 Catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By March 31,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/docs\/default-source\/coronaviruse\/situation-reports\/20200329-sitrep-69-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=8d6620fa_2\">Africa had 5,431 confirmed cases of COVID-19<\/a>&nbsp;, with almost a quarter (,1,353) in South Africa, followed by 656 in Egypt and &nbsp;584 in Algeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Virtually all 55 African countries have confirmed cases. These numbers are set to skyrocket as under-resourced public health systems grapple with containing the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The World Health Organisation\u2019s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, former health minister of Ethiopia, has implored Africa to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/emergencies\/diseases\/novel-coronavirus-2019\">wake up to the threat<\/a>&nbsp;, and noted how the continent is least equipped on its own to combat the pandemic.<ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aprmtoolkit.saiia.org.za\/aprm-faqs\">African Peer Review Mechanism<\/a>&nbsp;(APRM)&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aprm-au.org\/our-publications\/country-annual-reports\/?orderby=ID&amp;pg=0\">Country Review Reports<\/a>&nbsp;(CRRs) from Sierra Leone, Lesotho and Tanzania illustrate how problems in the health sector, coupled with poor governance and corruption, can exacerbate outbreaks like the coronavirus and Ebola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sierra Leone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sierra Leone was peer-reviewed in 2012. This was before the devastating Ebola outbreak in 2014 that caused 3,955 deaths in the West African country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sierra Leone\u2019s civil war from 1991 to 2002 damaged the quality of health service delivery and the sector became chronically under-funded as a result. Despite government efforts its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aprmtoolkit.saiia.org.za\/documents\/country-reports-and-exper\/445-sierra-leone\/file\">CRR<\/a>\u00a0said, \u201chealth service delivery, particularly to the poor and to rural areas, continues to suffer from (i) limited access due to distance and cost of services; (ii) inadequate transport and referral system; (iii) inadequate supply of medicines and supplies; (iv) limited community participation in sanitation and healthcare; and (v) critical shortage of health professionals.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202004010423.html\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><ins><br> <\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By March 31,&nbsp;Africa had 5,431 confirmed cases of COVID-19&nbsp;, with almost a quarter (,1,353) in South Africa, followed by 656 in Egypt and &nbsp;584 in Algeria. Virtually all 55 African&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}