Leaders in Africa Now Forced to Confront Healthcare Systems Which They Neglected for Years
Health
Africa’s most powerful leaders have been known to seek treatment abroad, instead of investing in healthcare in their own countries. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe died in a hospital in Singapore, and Cameroon’s Paul Biya regularly seeks treatment abroad. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari was out of the country for several months in 2017 for treatment in London for an undisclosed illness and has frequent checks abroad. Since he took office in 2015, he has embarked on at least four medical trips to the UK.
But now, with flights grounded and countries across the world on lockdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, these leaders are getting a wake-up call that they must fix their healthcare systems.
A terrifying prospect
Infection numbers across the continent, while significantly lower than other parts of the world, are rising exponentially. The World Health Organization recently reported that the number of cases in Africa was now more than 11,000, with 600 deaths. The pandemic has overwhelmed advanced health facilities, and experts predict it could devastate the continent’s fragile health systems, already plagued by inadequate funding and labor disputes.
Lifesaving machines like ventilators — critical to the management of Covid-19 cases — remain a luxury in some African countries. The Central African Republic (CAR) has only three ventilators to five million people, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said, warning that an outbreak could bring the tiny African nation to its knees.
“When rich nations are in panic mode stating that thousands of ventilators will not be enough, it just brings to light how poorer nations like CAR don’t stand a chance in the fight against Covid-19,” NRC Country Director in the CAR, David Manan said.
The situation is equally dire in Zimbabwe, where health workers in the nation’s hospitals say they lack basics such as bandages and gloves to take care of their patients. Nurses and doctors abstained from work to protest a shortage of coronavirus protective gear after the country recorded its first fatality last month.
A failed pledge
African leaders have consistently neglected their country’s health sector despite several pledges to do improve it, analysts say. In 2001, the heads of state of 52 African countries met in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja and committed to spending 15 percent of their yearly domestic budget on health. Just a handful of countries have met this target on the continent. They include Tanzania, Rwanda, Botswana and Zambia, according to the World Health Organization.
Rwanda doubled it’s health care spending over a period of 10 years, the WHO said in the 2017 report. The Central African nation has also received praised for its national health insurance coverage which is the highest on the continent. But a majority have fallen through the cracks in fulfilling this commitment. Since it signed the declaration, Nigeria has allocated less than six percent of its budget to health, and most of the funds are spent on salaries, according to Nigeria-based budget monitoring organization Budget.
Wake-up call
Nigerian-British historian Ed Keazor agrees that the fallout from the outbreak is a “wake-up call” for governments to prioritize affordable health care.
Keazor, a cancer survivor said he made the difficult decision to move back to London where he has access to affordable care under the National Health Service even though he works in Nigeria.
Conclusively, Africa should really be investing in its Healthcare systems, because at the end of the day, staying healthy is the most basic need of every citizen. We all want to stay healthy first, before we go out there facing the other troubles of the world.
