{"id":46098,"date":"2020-03-29T09:30:04","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T07:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/congo\/coronavirus-africa-world-health-organization-who-urges-african-countries-to-scale-up-covid-19-response\/"},"modified":"2020-03-29T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T07:30:05","slug":"coronavirus-africa-world-health-organization-who-urges-african-countries-to-scale-up-covid-19-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/congo\/coronavirus-africa-world-health-organization-who-urges-african-countries-to-scale-up-covid-19-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus – Africa: World Health Organization (WHO) urges African countries to scale up COVID-19 response"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The African region is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of reported confirmed COVID-19 cases, with a 25% daily increase over the past five days. Today, 39 countries reported a total of 216 cases in the past 24 hours, this a significant increase from a month ago, when one country in the region was reporting a handful of cases. Since the start of the outbreak, 39 countries have reported more than 1 800 cases of COVID-19, and there have been 31 deaths.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As the world races to stem the spread of the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) in the African Region is calling on countries to implement critical actions in the next two weeks while there is still time to prevent the outbreak in the region from overwhelming health services.\u00a0\u201cIt has been a very dramatic evolution. It is most important that countries still work very hard on containing the spread of COVID-19, while preparing for a broader expansion of the virus\u201d said Dr Matshidiso\u00a0Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. \u201cEvery arm of every government must work together to stop this virus from wreaking havoc in Africa. Countries must use this two-week window of opportunity to scale-up their actions before it is too late.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In a ten-point strategy released today, the Organization is calling for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to ease the deployment of staff and shipment of supplies as well as urging governments and the private sector to boost medical supplies and equipment.\u00a0Under the plan, WHO also asks countries to expand the numbers of health workers deployed by re-purposing staff, increasing public health education to help communities stay safe and protect others, and identifying and equiping facilities to treat and isolate patients.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

WHO has mobilized and re-purposed its personnel, trained more emergency responders, including through online sessions, and supported effective coordination for COVID-19 response.\u00a0\u201cOur top priority is to support countries in Africa in their response. We need all countries to act now \u2013 both to keep the virus from spreading and to help support preparedness and response efforts in vulnerable countries,\u201d said Dr Moeti.\u00a0\u00a0The need for urgent action in Africa is clear. Lately cases have been reported due to contact with people who travelled within Africa unlike before.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Some national authorities have taken proactive measures to limit or prevent social interaction, or to implement quarantining and isolation arrangements.\u00a0 As useful as such measures can be, relying on them alone is not enough. Core public health actions are needed: a strong surveillance system, effective screening, efficient contact-tracing, easy-to-follow public health messaging, and appropriate and targeted treatment measures are all required in conjunction with isolation and quarantining.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

WHO Regional Office for Africa 10-point strategy:<\/p>\n

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  1. \nMobilize and repurpose<\/strong>\u00a0personnel to scale up surveillance, medical care and public awareness.<\/li>\n
  2. \nTrain<\/strong>\u00a0more responders, including through online sessions, to bolster the response.<\/li>\n
  3. \nEffectively coordinate<\/strong>\u00a0the work of all stakeholders to improve early detection and clinical care.<\/li>\n
  4. \nEstablish humanitarian corridors<\/strong>\u00a0to ease surge deployments and supply shipments.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  5. \nRally<\/strong>\u00a0the world, including the private sector to\u00a0boost critical medical supplies and equipment.<\/strong>\n<\/li>\n
  6. \nEducate communities<\/strong>\u00a0to protect themselves and others.<\/li>\n
  7. \nSet up<\/strong>\u00a0scientific and\u00a0research teams<\/strong>\u00a0to guide the response, taking into account Africa\u2019s specificities.<\/li>\n
  8. \nSwiftly contain<\/strong>\u00a0the spread of the virus to\u00a0limit economic fallout.<\/strong>\n<\/li>\n
  9. \nAssist the vulnerable<\/strong>, mainly those needing humanitarian aid, and ensure continuity of routine essential services.<\/li>\n
  10. \nCreate solidarity systems<\/strong>\u00a0for action in Africa, South-South and North-South, and mitigate socio-economic disruption.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Distributed by APO Group on behalf of WHO Regional Office for Africa.<\/i>
    \n
    Source<\/a>
    \n
    South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Central Africa     Congo<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Download logo The African region is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of reported confirmed COVID-19 cases, with a 25% daily increase over the past five days. Today, 39 countries reported a total of 216 cases in the past 24 hours, this a significant increase from a month ago, when one country in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8377],"tags":[258,256,4380,4696,4554,8378,8379,8381,32489,6507,32926,5731,257,9218,6985,10440,254,6810,8380,5093],"class_list":["post-46098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-congo","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-african","tag-central-africa","tag-congo","tag-congo-news","tag-congo-republic","tag-congo-brazzaville","tag-coronavirus","tag-countries","tag-covid19","tag-health","tag-news","tag-organization","tag-response","tag-scale","tag-south-africa-today","tag-urges","tag-west-congo","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}