Leading efforts to prepare for the arrival of COVID-19 since the beginning of 2020 for the DRC, Dr. Eteni Longondo, DRC’s Minister of Public Health established a coronavirus preparedness committee that meets twice a week with the WHO and other partners to conduct simulation exercises at Kinshasa International Airport to test their readiness for handling cases.
Kinshasa International Airport is one of four airports, strategic border crossings, and three ports where they are testing travelers for early signs of Ebola and now health workers are checking for coronavirus as well.
If someone is suspected of being infected with the coronavirus, they are immediately taken to isolation. “It is helpful that a lot of the infrastructure needed to diagnose, isolate, and treat severe cases is already in place due to Ebola,” explains Dr. Gervais Folefack Tengomo, WHO Incident Manager for COVID-19 in the DRC. The DRC has a laboratory system already created for Ebola that can now be used for coronavirus testing as well. Currently, there are in excess of 20 countries in the WHO African Region that has diagnostic capabilities to test for COVID-19.
It is clear Africa took what it learned from previous pandemics and made the continent ready for whatever contagion comes next.