So who in the world knows what’s best in terms of health and prioritization for Africans? You would answer: Africans, of course. And I would argue that’s not necessarily the common view.
Global stakeholders and experts in the West sometimes think they know best. During the early stages of the pandemic, several global health experts and stakeholders in the West lined up to predict that Africa was going to suffer heavily in terms of COVID-19-related disease and death. Those predictions have not come true, even when allowing for the lower reporting rates as well as the shamefully low vaccine access in Africa. The mortality rate of the African continent has been well below that of countries in Western Europe as well as North America. These doom-laden predictions have not come true for many reasons, but two of them stand out from my own research. First, there was limited scientific knowledge of how the virus would behave in different populations and different environments. And second, there was an underestimation of Africa’s ability to respond to a pandemic. This led to predictions of Africa’s pandemic being extrapolated from events in Asia and Europe.
Now, my own work shows that the global experts confused the difference between preparedness and vulnerability. These two are not the same thing. To avoid this predicted fate, Africa followed the global stampede into wholesale lockdown. Ironically, the global trend has been for the more developed countries, such as the US and the UK, to often be more hard-hit by the pandemic. Of course the fact that Africa did not suffer the predicted burden is good news for the continent. However, it doesn’t mean that the continent has escaped unscathed.
The public health burden of COVID-19 is only half the story. We cannot ignore the indirect harms that have been caused by the lockdown policy -- a policy that has disproportionately affected Africa because it did not speak to our strengths or to our circumstances. Lockdown stopped childhood vaccination programs, which protect African children against diseases far much more deadly to them than COVID-19. Schools that are centers of so many child health and welfare programs were closed, even where teaching occurs outside. The wider catalog of the damage from COVID-19 response is frightening. Over 80 percent of the people who will die in Africa as a result of the indirect effects of COVID-19 will be children aged under five years of age by the year 2030.
Africa has a wealth of experience in dealing with epidemics, such as cholera, Ebola and measles, to name a few. Some African countries have strong contact tracing systems as well as very strong community health networks. So we needed to draw on our strengths and experience, prioritizing solutions which we knew would save African lives. For example, the provision of medical oxygen, whose shortage I was highlighting as early as March 2020, and which we’re perfectly capable of producing in Africa, as well as shielding our elderly and our vulnerable through the Ubuntu philosophy, as was practiced in Ethiopia.
So what would have happened had African countries mounted the response that was appropriate, proportionate and sustainable? So, using public health policies, drawing on our strengths, our experience, our health systems, our population demographics and our way of life. Well, Sierra Leone did just this, going against the Western tide of wholesale lockdown and instead mounting short three-day lockdowns. Of course there was no shortage of critics to this approach, but the outcome speaks for itself. So the mortality rate in Sierra Leone has been on the low side, even in Africa. The impact on the non-COVID-related hospital usage has been half that of the global average. And finally, the World Bank has just revised the country’s economic growth for 2021 upwards.
This clearly demonstrates that the solutions to Africa’s health problems must be homegrown and they must be led by Africans. I am helping to come up with those solutions through my research work on infectious diseases here. After all, we, the Africans, know what’s best when it comes to health priorities and workable solutions for Africa.
On that note, I wish you good health, and thank you.
