Reliable, affordable electricity is needed to keep people connected at home and to run life-saving equipment in hospitals<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A pandemic puts pressure on every part of a country\u2019s economy and society. For developing countries that were already facing major challenges before COVID-19, this pressure will be particularly painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the virus spreads, especially across Africa and parts of Asia, one of the most used preventative measures is a luxury not all countries can afford. Social distancing and stay-at-home measures being adopted in many countries are predicated on an important assumption: that populations have access to reliable, affordable electricity to stay connected and continue to communicate with public services and one another remotely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reality is 840 million people<\/a> \u2013 predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa \u2013 are living without access to electricity and hundreds of millions more only have access to very limited or unreliable electricity. Many of these people, largely women, reside either in crowded cities or rural areas. \u201cSheltering in place\u201d in such areas for long periods of time may not be possible as energy is needed to cook and store food, or to cool homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ability for doctors and first responders to treat infected populations is also based on the assumption that clinics, medical equipment and medicines are fully functioning with access to sufficient, uninterrupted, reliable electricity. In parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that only 28% of health facilities have access to reliable electricity. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reliable, affordable electricity is needed to keep people connected at home and to run life-saving equipment in hospitals A pandemic puts pressure on every part of a country\u2019s economy and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9098,"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-9096","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\/9096","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=9096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}