MedicalBrief 290 - 20 January 2020
"Despite only one person in Africa so far diagnosed with Covid-19, experts warn of the potential for imminent havoc on an under-prepared, under-resourced continent, writes MedicalBrief. In South Africa, specifically, the acute shortage of infectious disease specialists in both public and private hospitals means the country would struggle to contain an outbreak.
Bill Gates has warned that coronavirus in Africa could overwhelm health services and trigger a pandemic which could cause 10m deaths. The Daily Telegraph reports that the Microsoft founder and global health pioneer was speaking at the AAAS meeting in Seattle just hours before the first case was confirmed in Cairo, Egypt. There are now fears that the disease could spread to sub-Saharan Africa where it could spark an uncontrollable outbreak, with health services unable to monitor or control the virus.
Gates said: “This is a huge challenge, we’ve always known the potential for a naturally caused, or intentionally caused, pandemic is one if the few things that could disrupt health systems and economies and cause more than 10m excess deaths. We’re doing the constant science to provide the tools to do the diagnosis to provide vaccines, to provide therapeutics and hopefully contain this epidemic, but it’s potentially a very bad situation.”
Gates warned that there had been a huge under-investment in anti-virals and called on China to “step-up” and provide better drugs.
According to the report UK experts said it was unsurprising that the disease had reached Egypt because Cairo was a world hub and had a lot of visitors from China. They said it was encouraging that the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) were working with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and African Member States to improve diagnosis and surveillance. The patient was isolated quickly and people who had been in contact all tested negative."
Read more:
https://www.medicalbrief.co.za/archives/covid-19-sa-would-struggle-because-of-specialist-shortage/
