Feature Stories

It is a quiet morning at an Ebola treatment centre in the outskirts of N’zerekore, a town in the south-east of Guinea. The centre’s triage and reception areas are all empty, and medical staff are relaxed and jovial as they tend to a small handful of patients or catch up on some administrative tasks in the office.

While the 2014–2016 deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa devastated lives and wrecked health services, it also offered pivotal lessons in outbreak control by stoking swift and more effective response as well as driving progress in vaccines and therapeutics.

“I didn’t think that I could get COVID out here in my village,” says Linda Simelane at her home in Sibebe in rural Eswatini.

“I stay away from people, I stay alone, but it happened that I started getting flu symptoms.” 

At the peak of Africa’s first wave of infections in mid-2020, Ms Simelane’s son took her to get tested for COVID-19, but as she waited for her results at home, her condition rapidly deteriorated.

As the second wave of COVID-19 infections surged in early 2021, Senegal stepped up measures to cope with the anticipated rise in the number of patients needing critical care. Professor Daye Ka, Infectious and Tropical Disease Expert and member of Senegal’s COVID-19 task force, explains the steps taken to avert hospitals being overrun by a drastic rise in critically ill patients.

Africa has the highest global mortality rate among critically ill COVID-19 patients despite having the world’s lowest COVID-19 infections and deaths overall, a recent study published by the Lancet found. Shortage of critical care resources and their underuse are some of the contributing factors. Dr Christian Owoo, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anaesthesia, University of Ghana Medical School and a Consultant Anaesthetist/Intensivist and Head of Intensive Care Unit at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, discusses ways to prevent severe COVID-19 illness and avert a surge in deaths.

The aircraft engines power down as disembarking passengers rummage through their carry-on bags for documents in readiness for immigration. This is Kigali International Airport, a busy regional hub. The country has implemented an innovative electronic tracking system to stop the domestic spread of COVID-19 from arriving passengers.

More than 480 million people in the African region suffer from oral diseases such as dental caries and periodontal diseases, yet oral health remains a low priority in many countries, leading to inadequate financial and technical investment that undermine prevention and care services.

In the small village of Sinkolé in the densely-forested south-east of Guinea, scores of men and women gather outside a ramshackle community hall on a Friday morning. Marius Djo, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisor on Prevention of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA), waits for everyone to take a seat on old wooden school benches arranged in a rough semi-circle, then he begins an animated introduction.

Financial planning is crucial for Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Millions of vaccine deliveries are planned for later this year and African countries must urgently plan ahead to quickly roll them out and avoid unplanned costs. The World Bank estimates that each month of delay in the provision of COVID-19 vaccines could cost Africa US$ 14 billion in lost GDP. 

With COVID-19 vaccine supplies to Africa slowing down, the continent is working to boost its own manufacturing capacities for vaccines, medicines and vital health technologies.