Africa-Press – Cape verde. The crisis became an “eye-opener” for many nations, especially in Africa, where health infrastructure has proven to be in need of more investment in order to resist future outbreaks.
African countries are preparing their health infrastructure to be “much readier” for any future crises in the aftermath of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Africa regional director on Thursday.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2019, governments all across Africa have been investing in their health systems and increasing their capacities, Moeti said. She also noted that after overcoming the pandemic, African nations continued ramping up their efforts to strengthen their health institutions, attempting to close all the gaps revealed during the pandemic, including training health workers on how to respond adequately to similar outbreaks.
Moeti noted that one of the “most exciting outcomes of the struggle” the continent faced in obtaining COVID-19 vaccines for its people is that some nations have already found ways to develop their capabilities and obtain necessary technologies for local vaccine production.
The WHO Africa regional office director highlighted that in order to keep the gains from the coronavirus pandemic response, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the African healthcare systems.
Meanwhile, Gambia’s Health Minister Ahmadou Lamin Samateh said the COVID-19 pandemic was “very difficult” for the health system in her country, as well as in many countries across Africa. She admitted that the pandemic was “an eye-opener for all of us to know where the gaps have been,” calling on the international community to support the continent’s effort to build its health infrastructure to withstand future pandemics.
As of December 2022, almost three years since the African continent first encountered the coronavirus (COVID-19) in mid-February 2020, the number of infection cases registered in the African continent is around 9.5 million, according to the World Health Organization.
South Africa was in the lead of African countries with the biggest number of cases, followed by Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in the Northern part of the continent. The death toll across Africa nears 175,000 people.
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