Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for connecting with us.
Bonjour à tout le monde, merci d’être avec nous cette après midi.
I’m very pleased to be joined by the Honourable Ministers of Health of Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda. Welcome Minsters.
I would like to start by commending your tremendous leadership, and through you appreciate the all-of-government approaches that the Heads of State are leading in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in the African Region.
I look forward very much to the sharing of experiences and achievements today and going forward, particularly on the progress made in balancing between preventing the spread of the virus and saving lives while protecting livelihoods in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the African continent, it took 36 days to reach 1000 reported cases, and then 62 days to move to 100,000 cases. We are just above this 100,000 now. We are seeing some rapid increases. Compared to two weeks ago, reported cases have tripled in five countries and doubled in 10 countries, noting that most countries still have fewer than 1000 reported cases.
This means that as governments ease lockdowns and other social measures, it’s important that strong public health measures are in place all over the territories not just in the capital cities, that communities are empowered and enabled to take preventive actions, and that we continue working on strengthening health systems and delivering essential services to people.
Yesterday marked three months since the first COVID-19 case was reported in sub-Saharan Africa, in Nigeria.
In this time, governments have been working day and night, with support from WHO and our partners to contain the spread of this virus.
We have worked with partners to procure and replenish essential supplies and equipment. I have to say that this remains one of the biggest challenges in the response because of disruptions in the global market in items such as test kits and personal protective equipment.
We have trained more than 10 000 health workers in Africa in areas of intervention such as infection prevention and control, management of cases, logistics, and also psychosocial support, which is very important.
We have repurposed 900 WHO staff at the regional level and in every country, to support the COVID-19 response, and mobilized more than 220 international experts to send to our countries to support them.
We are also leveraging new tools and ideas, including through the first Africa hackathon for COVID-19 which brought together 100 innovators and provided seed funding to take forward the most promising proposals, including mobile-driven self-diagnosis, screening and mapping tools, and low-cost methods for producing personal protective equipment.
These are a few of WHO’s key actions, in addition to partner coordination, collecting and analysing surveillance information, and providing policy and technical guidance to countries on a daily basis.
In closing, with strong country leadership and implementation of public health and social measures, cases in Africa remain lower than in some other parts of the world. However, we are not letting our guard down, and we cannot be complacent.
We all have roles to play and must be ready for a long fight against COVID-19. So, I ask that we continue with international solidarity and we maintain a strong focus on preventing the spread of this virus to protect every community.
Thank you again for having joined us today.