What African Nations Are Teaching the West About Fighting the Coronavirus

A surge in cases across the continent was expected by now and when that did not happen, many in the West pondered why, questioning whether Africa’s climate and demography played a role, even centuries old tropes of its ‘magic’ pervaded the conversation. The East African countries better containing the virus, up to now, have benefitted by Ebola response, which ironically, is a result of US CDC training following the 2014 Ebola outbreak in the region. Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Uganda, all of which border the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were forced to respond to an Ebola outbreak in 2018 and each country has rapid response teams, trained contact tracers and a whole suite of public health protocols in place, which they have adapted to respond to the coronavirus. The fact of the matter is Africa was better prepared, and more importantly, seeing the data and the numbers early, responded in a timely and aggressive fashion. Many countries were willing to shut down and declare states of emergency when no cases or very few were reported. Rwanda, in its first month of response, increased from two cases to 134, while Belgium with its same size population grew from two cases to 74,000. Rwanda responded from the beginning with tracing, isolating and testing contacts. Then five days after the first cases, commercial flights were halted, followed by a country lockdown two days later, in a move to limit the spread of the virus and ease the arduous work of contact tracing. By the end of April, more than 20,000 had been tested and two random community surveys had been conducted, concluding that community transmission had not occurred. Uganda and Ethiopia, which conducted a door-to-door survey of its five million residents in the capital Addis Ababa, have followed similar response strategies, where numbers remain low relative to expectations. So too in South Sudan, Burundi, Botswana and South Africa. The US and France, in its fourth month of the outbreak, is only now initiating contact tracing. In a quest to guard against overconfidence, cautious optimism is on display, as concerns persist over the availability of tests, which is the best barometer for the true extent of the virus’ spread. But the methods adopted so far have allowed these countries to get a clearer picture of the situation, allowing for far better containment strategies. (The New Yorker)

Analysis

Sub-Saharan Africa is host to more than 26% of the world’s refugee population and the continent has the second highest number of internally displaced people. The humanitarian need is great in some countries, as are the development needs, where socio-economic and historical realities have contributed to persistent poverty. In this context, local governments, bilateral aid agencies and humanitarian and development actors have, in partnership, (long entrenched in some cases) established public health programs that are built to respond to crises, ongoing humanitarian needs and build capacity of local government health ministries. One of the key tools in these programs are community health workers who can be rapidly deployed or where distance is necessary, use innovative remote and in-person communications methods that are socially and culturally relevant and effective. While humanitarian and development needs do tend to outweigh funding capacities and the coronavirus pandemic has already highlighted huge gaps in need vs funding, in some contexts, perhaps it is a small blessing that the framework, apparatus and training already exists to raise awareness, preparedness and hopefully stem contagion.