Coping with COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Might the Future Hold?
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PERSPECTIVE
Coping with COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Might the Future Hold? Franck J. D. Mennechet1
•
Guy R. Takoudjou Dzomo2
Received: 4 June 2020 / Accepted: 24 July 2020 Ó Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS 2020
The African COVID-19 Scenario On December 31st, 2019 an unexplained case of pneumonia was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (Zhou et al. 2020). On January 9th, 2020, Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced the discovery of a new type of coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 that causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (Shereen et al. 2020; WHO 2020j; Zhou et al. 2020). A few months later, the virus is sweeping the world with almost 18 million recorded global cases and 709,000 deaths as of August 7th 2020 (WHO 2020a). After China, Europe and United States, South America is currently the new epicenter of the pandemic, but the situation is worsening in India, and the pandemic is moving fast. Nevertheless, confronted by the disastrous socio-economic consequences of the epidemic, a number of countries have already started a progressive end to the lockdown. Africa confirmed its first case of COVID19 in Egypt on February 14th. On February 27th, Nigeria reported the first official case of SARS-CoV-2 in the subSaharan area, and on March 18th Burkina Faso the first death. On August 7th 2020 this number has risen to more than 1,000,000 cases and caused about 22,000 deaths in Africa according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) (Africa CDC 2020a). Southern and Northern Africa have currently the highest number of official cases and deaths, but Western Africa is the most impacted by the death toll in sub-Saharan zone, followed by Eastern and Central Africa. However, these & Guy R. Takoudjou Dzomo [email protected] & Franck J. D. Mennechet [email protected] 1
Institute of Molecular Genetic of Montpellier, CNRS, University of Montpellier, Montpellier 34090, France
2
University Hospital Complex the ‘‘Bon Samaritain’’, N’Djamena, BP 456, Republic of Chad
numbers are probably undervalued and could represent only the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’. According to the WHO, the highest mortality rates for COVID-19 were observed in the Republic of Chad (8.5%), Niger (6.2%), Algeria (5.7%), Angola (5.4%), Burkina Faso (5.3%), Mali (5.1%) and Liberia (4.5%). On July 8th 2020, South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Cameroon accounted for 75% of the total official deaths reported in Africa.
Picturing the Sub-Saharan Health Situation Sub-Saharan Africa is home to nearly 60% of the world’s population living in extreme poverty (The World Bank 2018; The World Bank 2020c). Despite a significant improvement over the last 10 years, too little is yet known about the health situation in Africa. It is, however, the continent with the poorest resourced health, the highest mortality rates and also the highest number of deaths due to infectious diseases.
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