WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Good afternoon to everyone joining us for this press conference. Thank you for having joined us.
First of all, I’m very pleased to have colleagues from UNICEF, IOM and WEF with me today as the COVID-19 pandemic requires all of us to work together, it really requires a multisectoral, whole-of-society approach and we can only succeed if we put all of our work together.
We are seeing, for example, that the economic impacts of this pandemic worldwide are extremely severe. We expect that since our countries have fragile economies that this will be more so in African countries, especially for many of the vulnerable communities and households in Africa. I’m sure we will be hearing about this from my colleagues at UNICEF, WEF and IOM.
This pandemic is continuing to rapidly evolve in Africa. In the past week, there are now more than 10 000 people on the continent of Africa who have been confirmed as cases and unfortunately more than 500 people have lost their lives.
There are clusters of cases and community spread going on in at least 16 of our countries. So, we are no longer speaking about imported cases, from people that have travelled from somewhere else.
We are seeing the epidemic also spread geographically within these countries, beyond the capital cities where it first manifests itself, to the districts and local levels, which has serious implications for the response’s expansion. This is in countries like Algeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and South Africa.
Eighteen countries still have less than 20 confirmed cases reported. I have to say that some of these are the smaller countries that have had difficulties in putting in place testing capacity, but we still do have a significant number of countries where so far we are not detecting community spread, which emphasizes then the importance of continuing strongly with public health measures that are meant to limit the spread of the virus. These, of course, are important even in countries where there is further geographic spread and community transmission.
So, I’d like to remind and emphasize again, what these are: first of all, surveillance in order to identify cases, tracing the contacts of those cases, isolating both the contacts and the cases, providing care and treatment for the people who are ill, particularly those who are seriously ill with this virus, and very importantly providing information to people in the community, hearing what are their beliefs and their understandings, so that they are enabled to play their part in interventions such as physical and social distancing, handwashing, cleaning surfaces in the house and at work in order to minimize the spread of the virus. These are very important interventions.
I’d also like to emphasize that as the epidemic spreads beyond capital cities, the response also needs to spread. For example, capacity for testing needs to go beyond capital cities, and we need to really engage people at the community level, such as community health workers, who have been put in place in some of the health services of our countries, volunteers of partner organizations like the Red Cross, need to be constantly in contact with people, and the governments need to mobilize the capacities to replicate these interventions all over countries, at the local level.
There has been a lot of discussion about the use of masks and the context of our African Region, were we have, especially in low-resource communities, real challenges in physical distancing in people’s homes. WHO has updated guidance around masks, still emphasizing very much the use of masks, particularly in health-care settings and the use of masks of certain specifications, which we are confident can be effective.
However, we are recognizing that in our difficult context in Africa, there may be room for the use of other adapted masks, for example, masks made out of cotton to certain specifications, which are being circulated by some partner organizations.
What is very important about this improvisation of the use of masks is that we should assure ourselves that they do not constitute a further risk of transmission. So, people need to be guided very clearly, how to use them safely. We recognize that this is a possibility that may be necessary in the difficult context in our Region.
I would like to emphasize that we also need to continue the provision of services for other priority health problems. We have many people with HIV in the Region, with tuberculosis. We need to prevent the spread of malaria and make sure that people get treated properly, because it’s a major killer of children in our Region. Children need to continue to be immunized, women need to continue to have safe deliveries when they are having babies. So, these also need to be put in place, all around the countries, even as they are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’m very happy to say, we are seeing at the political level on the continent, facilitated by the African Union, a coming together of the leaders to recognize that they need to put in place, despite the lockdown measures, humanitarian corridors that will enable the movement of some of the expertise, the people, and very much the supplies that are required for the response to COVID-19 and also for the provision of basic health services and dealing with other basic needs of people that go beyond health.
Finally, I’d like to mention that last week, some scientists made some unfortunate remarks about vaccine trials in Africa. I’d like to emphasize a couple of points about this: We encourage countries to engage in vaccine trials that respect international standards in terms of ethics, in terms of respect of the rights of people. We encourage actually, African countries to get involved in trials, not only for vaccines but also for discovering therapeutics because this is the way that they will be most adapted and relevant for African populations. But, I would like to emphasize that all the clinical trials will be undertaken absolutely respecting international standards.
So, I’d like to close and say that the health, social and economic consequences of the pandemic will be profound worldwide and will be very severe in our Region and urge and encourage that we all work together to help our countries minimize this impact.
Thank you very much.