Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Good afternoon to everyone and thank you very much for connecting with us.
I’m very pleased to be joined today by Ms Winne Byanyima from UNAIDS and Ms Diop, the African Union Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security and also the Founder of Femmes Africa Soldarite. Thank you so much for having joined us.
We know that women are often the primary care givers in families, especially for children and dependents, and they play a very important part in health, making up 70% of the global health workforce, particularly as nurses who provide primary and essential care in all our health systems.
In recent months, African women have been immediately and disproportionately affected by the so-called lockdowns because of the type of work and the role that they play in families and in economies.
Many women work in personal care, sometimes running businesses as hairdressers, personal caregivers and also women are very much active in the informal sector of the economy. The physical distancing related stay-at-home orders have affected women’s businesses, their ability to earn their daily living, and they have also in some cases, unfortunately exposed women who are involved in abusive relationships to a higher risk of gender-based violence.
Although overall in the African Region, women account for around 40% of COVID-19 cases, we have seen a range in this, from about 35% in some countries to over 55% in South Africa, and we need to look more and more at the situation here.
In the first quarter of this year, compared to 2019, there are reports of drops in access to essential services for people, including for women. For example, fewer women accessing oral contraceptives and attending antenatal care visits, as well as fewer deliveries being carried out in health-care facilities. There are broadly reports of disruptions to sexual and reproductive health services and other essential services for chronic care, and I’m sure Winnie will be sharing with us the situation as far as HIV care access is concerned.
If people who are normally going to go for care cannot go, in the end they will have to be cared for at home and very often it is women who have to step in to this breach.
This lack of access to care is a great concern to us, because there are an estimated 196,000 maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa each year, accounting for 66% of the global total, and 900,000 newborn deaths or one-third of the global total.
So, we are working with Governments and partners to find ways to continue to deliver essential services, including the provision of personal protective equipment to health-care workers, many of whom are nurses, many of whom are women.
Over the past four months, with Colleges of Nursing in Africa we have provided targeted virtual trainings to over 1000 nurses and midwives. In West Africa, this training has been cascaded beyond the capital cities, sub-nationally using virtual platforms – thus allowing as many nurses as possible to be trained in case management for COVID-19 and, also very importantly in infection prevention and control.
Turning then to a brief update on the COVID-19 pandemic on the African continent: there are now more than 265,000 cases and sadly 7000 people have lost their lives.
In the WHO African Region, eight of the 47 countries account for 84% of the new cases. So we see that there is great disparity or variety in the way that countries are affected by the pandemic and this is in the past seven days. Five countries account for 80% of COVID-19 related deaths in the past week in the African Region.
The majority of new cases are being reported in specific hot spot provinces and districts in the countries concerned, generally where the virus was initially identified in imported cases.
In several other countries, while the total cases remain low, community transmission and high increases in new cases have been reported in recent weeks. So, we see that the situation continues to evolve, to ebb and flow, based on what governments and partners are doing.
As social measures, including the restriction of movement, are eased in countries, it remains very important that all communities are able to identify, test, isolate and care for COVID-19 cases and to trace and isolate their contacts. We are continuing to work with partners, in supporting governments, to decentralize and scale-up the core public health capacities, as well as organizing outreach services to provide essential services.
Using these measures, Seychelles for example, has not reported a new case for more than 70 days (over a couple of months), Mauritius has not reported a new case in 10 days. Countries like Namibia and the Gambia are reporting very few new cases.
This progress is very encouraging, and we need to continue to note it, and we will continue working day and night to assist countries to respond to the pandemic, to save lives, and more broadly to make access to quality care, without financial hardship, a reality for all people in Africa.
I very much look forward to our discussion today and thank you once again for having joined us.