Feature Stories

When a sample sent to the referral laboratory in the capital Algiers gave a positive result, the Ministry of Health announced Algeria’s first COVID-19 case on 26 February, becoming the second African country to confirm the virus. Since then, dozens of people have caught the infection. Unlike years past, it now takes just two hours to analyse such specimen. In addition to speed, the laboratory is also striving to ensure testing integrity – an important cog in the efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19.

When the Kenyan Government announced the country’s first case of COVID-19, clinician Jackson Njoroge was already hard at work.  He and his colleagues from the Kenyan Ministry of Health’s Rapid Response Team had already drawn up a list of people who might have come into contact with the first patient.  Now they were rushing to find them. His mission was to find another passenger from the flight that had brought Kenya’s case into the country.  The World Health Organization (WHO) has already helped train 1,500 Kenyan health workers in various health facilities to prepare for just this situation.  With the announcement, the country’s government and WHO Office shifted from a state of readiness to response mode.

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially designated COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020. There are now 147 confirmed cases in Africa in 15 countries, and there have been four COVID-19-related deaths. 

Leaning over desks with hands-free headsets hugging veils or bare heads, a team of doctors answers seemingly endless phone calls. Hundreds of worried callers ring every day to seek advice on how to stay safe, understand the symptoms or find out if the flu they are battling is indeed the new COVID-19. 

The observation period of the last people to have come in contact with an Ebola patient in the Democratic Republic of Congo has ended, another significant step in the efforts to end the outbreak. The 21-day follow-up for the 46 contacts elapsed on 10 March. 

In the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak, in the city of Beni in North Kivu, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Democratic of the Republic of the Congo’s Health Ministry adopted a strategy once used during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to simplify vital work of monitoring contacts of patients.

Dr Temidayo Fawole may have been at the WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville this week to attend training on the management and treatment of COVID-19 patients, but home – Nigeria – was never far from her thoughts.

Guinean anthropologist, David Niabalamou is so passionate about his job engaging with communities affected by Ebola that he’s learned two new languages in twelve months, earning him the affectionate nickname, David the Local, from colleagues. Having worked on the Ebola response in his native Guinea from 2014 to 2016, Niabalamou was keenly aware that language is key to earning people’s trust. 

“In some places they threw stones at us, but in others community leaders became engaged and fought alongside us for the survival of their people,” says Dr Freddy Banza, an epidemiologist and public health specialist with World Health Organization (WHO).