… the virus originated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency – largely because of fears that poorer countries may not be able to cope with an outbreak.
“The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is from Ethiopia.
The health systems in many African countries are already struggling with the existing workload, so can they deal with another outbreak of a highly infectious disease?
Michael Yao, WHO’s head of emergency operations in Africa, notes that some countries on the continent “have the minimum to start with – they’re not starting from scratch”.
“We know how fragile the health system is on the African continent and these systems are already overwhelmed by many ongoing disease outbreaks, so for us it is critical to detect earlier so that we can prevent the spread.”
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that public health officials are operating in “uncharted territory” as they combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. To date, it has infected more than 90,000 people across 73 countries and territories as of Monday evening.
The virus has spread to every continent except Antarctica since it was first identified in December last year in the