By CHINEDU ASADU
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Building on the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, African countries are strengthening fitness systems to prepare for the next fitness crisis, the World Health Organization’s Africa director said Thursday.
At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, some of the continent’s 54 countries with another 1. 3 billion people lacked services or trained fitness staff to adequately respond to the fitness crisis, and some were suffering to provide hospital isolation rooms and intensive care units, Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, he said Thursday at an online briefing.
However, in three years, African countries have increased their investments in fitness infrastructure in the race against the pandemic with global donors, he said.
“The future, as challenging as the past two years have been, will put us in a much better position in terms of our strategies, investments and functions to address public health threats,” Moeti said.
“We now know what we want to do to make sure our systems are resilient to the impact of a surprise like an epidemic,” he said.
Across the continent, he said, WHO is collaborating with countries to build capacity through first-responder education, while work is also underway in public gymnasiums and emergency operations.
One of the “most exciting results of the struggle” Africa has faced to unload COVID-19 vaccines is that some countries on the continent are lately increasing their capacities to produce such key equipment locally, Moeti added.
“Whatever happens in the future, the next pandemic will make the world and Africa much more prepared” in their response, he said, positive about “important partnerships” and the creation of African establishments “to take the initiative to paint on the preparation box and also on physical care number one.
In Gambia, as in many countries in Africa, the pandemic has been “very difficult” for many fitness systems, it has been “an eye-opener for all of us to know where the gaps are,” said Ahmadou Lamin Samateh, Gambia’s fitness minister. Fitness.
Samateh called for a global formula that provides more assistance and resources to countries facing challenges.
“National governments have a role to play, but foreign communities also have a role to play,” he said. “We have noticed in the COVID-19 pandemic that a challenge in one component of the global is a challenge for the overall global. “
And even as Africa still faces gaps in COVID-19 vaccines, Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa, warned that there is still work to be done to sustain the gains of the pandemic response.
“As we enter 2023, it’s time to take COVID-19 out of emergency reaction mode and into the healthcare regime,” Moeti said.