Africa Press-Nigeria:<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Africa could become the next epicentre of the Coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n
The organization stated that the continent does not have enough ventilators to deal with the pandemic and there was a sharp rise in cases in the past weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201dThere have been almost 1,000 deaths and more than 18,000 infections across Africa so far, although these rates are far lower than those seen in parts of Europe and the US but the virus appears to be spreading away from African capitals,\u201d WHO added.<\/p>\n
The organization\u2019s Africa Director, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, told the BBC that the organization had witnessed the virus spreading from capital cities to \u201cthe hinterland,\u201d in South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Ghana.<\/p>\n
She said they were focusing on prevention rather than treating the virus because African countries don\u2019t have the capacity to treat many Coronavirus patients.<\/p>\n
Moeti said, \u201cWe want to minimize the proportion of people who get to the point of needing critical care in an ICU, because we know that these types of facilities are not adequate by any means in the majority of African countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say the issue of ventilators is one of the biggest challenges that the countries are facing.<\/p>\n
\u201dFor patients critically ill with COVID-19, access to a ventilator could be a matter of life or death,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Recall that one of the first recorded deaths from Coronavirus in Africa was a Zimbabwean journalist, Zororo Makamba who died in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa Press-Nigeria: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Africa could become the next epicentre of the Coronavirus outbreak. The organization stated that the continent does not have enough ventilators to deal with the pandemic and there was a sharp rise in cases in the past weeks. \u201dThere have been almost 1,000 deaths and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":21212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1438,1437],"tags":[1453,728],"class_list":["post-24009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-coronavirus-in-nigeria","category-files","tag-coronavirus-in-nigeria","tag-who"],"yoast_head":"\n