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ANKARA
While battling climate change, armed conflict and poverty, African nations face a new version of a contagious virus without a vaccine to protect proper citizens or health systems.
Since the coronavirus pandemic was reported on the continent in March, it has claimed 41,262 lives, infected 1,716,864 and 1,406,528 recoveries, according to data compiled by the African Centers for Control and Control. Disease Prevention on Monday.
Regionally, southern Africa suffered the highest number of cases and deaths now numbering 792,570 and 20,403, respectively.
However, the region also has the highest number of recoveries with 705,542.
Meanwhile, North Africa recorded 472,367 cases and 13,193 deaths.
COVID-19 has reportedly claimed 3,803 lives while infecting 204,718 in East Africa.
West Africa, according to Africa CDC figures, has seen 2,730 COVID-19-related deaths and 187,449 infections.
And in Central Africa, as of Monday, 1,133 COVID-19-related deaths and 59,760 cases, according to the Africa CDC.
In an article on the effects of the pandemic in Africa, CDC Africa Director John Nkengasong wrote last week: “SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] The pandemic has revealed that Africa needs a new public health order to be resilient, adapt, and cope with the disease threats of the 21st century. “
According to Nkengasong, this new order will need “strengthened national and continental public health institutions; local manufacture of vaccines, therapies and diagnostics; attraction, training and retention of public health personnel; and fostering respectful local and international associations. “
Nkengasong’s article comes as several international organizations and humanitarian NGOs have published reports on the dire situation, particularly in African regions, in terms of floods, armed conflicts, locust attacks and the lack of basic services such as access to clean water or circumstances that allow the necessary social distance to avoid the contagious virus.
Even the international humanitarian fund earmarked for Africa is reportedly facing a shortage to help African adults and children in the face of a complicated scenario of insecurity, hunger, poverty, health treatment and poverty. deprivation of educational opportunities.
Poor health systems
In March 2017, a report shared by the UN said that 1.6 million Africans died of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-related diseases in 2015, mainly due to a lack of medicines.
“Less than 2% of the drugs consumed in Africa are produced on the continent, which means that many sick patients do not have access to locally produced drugs and cannot afford to buy imported ones,” he said.
For example, in some parts of Zimbabwe, nurses could administer pain relievers to patients as a “treat-all drug.”
He went on to say that nearly 80% of Africans “depend on public health facilities, … with public health facilities suffering from chronic shortages of critical drugs”, leaving many patients dead from “easily curable diseases” .
After COVID-19 invaded Africa, several reports spoke of protests and strikes by doctors and health workers in African countries due to the lack of protection to deal with the contagious virus and provide help to infected patients.
Doctors and health workers have also suffered from a lack of rights, including adequate wages and basic economic rights.
Kenya, the third-largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, witnessed a strike by doctors at public hospitals in Nairobi in August to protest wage delays and a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in handling patients with COVID-19.
Amid continued protests, the Kenyan president called for investigations into the alleged misappropriation of funds intended to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
In Nigeria, doctors and health workers have repeatedly gone on strike and protested the lack of PPE for health workers and demanded payment of wages.
In June, the National Association of Resident Physicians of Nigeria launched an indefinite national strike, demanding that the government make “alternative arrangements” for the care of patients amid COVID-19.
Nigerian health workers resumed their duties after the government released 4.6 billion Nigerian nairas ($ 11.9 million) in late June to pay the risk allowance to 55,031 workers at 35 coronavirus-designated hospitals and medical centers. .
However, in September, Abuja doctors went on an “indefinite strike” due to non-payment of a special coronavirus allowance.
That happened while in some areas of Uganda most frontline health workers lack transportation to hospitals, as the country received donated bicycles for health workers in Sembabule and Kitgum districts in May.
In the worst affected African country, South Africa, the health system has been affected by “the lack of PPE, the increase in death rates, mental health problems, substance abuse, the resurgence of NCDs. [noncommunicable ciseases], ”According to research published in September by the journal Science Direct.
“The closure of international borders, the collapse of global demand, supply interruptions, the drastic reduction of human and industrial activities during the closure cause socio-economic problems,” the investigation read.
“The prolonged effects of the blockade of psychosocial support services led to outbursts of uncertainty, acute panic, fear, depression, obsessive behaviors, social disturbances, stigmatization, anxiety, an increase in cases of gender violence and discrimination in the distribution of relief food aid, ”he added.
Citing a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), the CDC director for Africa said in an article last Thursday titled “Africa needs a new public health order to address infectious disease threats,” that the new The order of public health in African countries “must be maintained on four pillars: strengthening public health institutions; local manufacture of vaccines, therapies and diagnostics; a strengthened public health workforce; and respectful local and international associations.”
“Africa is balancing its development aspirations with strengthening its health systems to help it fight simultaneous synergistic epidemics,” said Nkengasong. “It faces a set of linked health problems that interact synergistically, contributing to its excessive burden of disease: rising rates of noncommunicable diseases, emerging and re-emerging infections and endemic diseases.”
This occurs as African countries struggle with high suicide rates and therefore the need for mental health care is of the utmost importance, according to a WHO warning.
Government spending on mental health is “very low” on the continent: less than 10 cents compared to the global average of $ 2.50 per person, said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Africa director, during a virtual press conference. about COVID-19 and mental health. in Africa.
According to the WHO, critical funding gaps are halting and disrupting crucial mental health services in Africa as demand for services increases amid the COVID-19 pandemic, making the latter an additional crisis that suffer or a serious alarm to push the Africans to survive.
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