COVID-19 in West Africa: regional resource mobilisation and allocation in the first year of the pandemic.
BMJ Glob Health
; 6(5)2021 05.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1216801
ABSTRACT
The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent's health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Health Care Rationing
/
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Qualitative research
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Africa
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Bmjgh-2020-004762
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS