Home » Against covid Africa has to get by on its own – Patrick Gathara

Against covid Africa has to get by on its own – Patrick Gathara

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Last year, US billionaire Bill Gates, philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, said the pandemic threatened to bring African health services to their knees and could cause tens of millions of deaths on the continent. Gates has been criticized for fueling the stereotype of African impotence. And the astonishment of the Western media, bewildered that Africans weren’t dying as much as Americans and Europeans, was met with the same outrage. Today, as deaths from covid-19 increase across Africa and access to vaccines remains a mirage for many, apocalyptic scenarios are being evoked again and reflections are being made on the continent’s inability to oppose its sad fate. Only this time it is the Africans themselves who spread this idea.

On July 27, in an article published in the journal Nature, Dr. Mosoka Fallah, former director of the National Institute of Public Health of Liberia, declared that “the mass deaths from covid-19 in Africa have begun” and that ” the rich of the world must intervene ”. Larry Madowo, recently appointed correspondent for CNN in Kenya, said in an article that he lost his uncle to covid-19, and his heart skips every time he receives a call from home, where his grandmother is. attached to a pulmonary ventilator. “My grandmother is 96 years old but she is one of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who until recently had not been vaccinated, because rich countries kept most of their doses to themselves.” Madowo added that even in countries like Rwanda, where there is an obligation to use masks and social distancing, confinements and curfews continue to be a constant in daily life, “because only vaccines protect”.

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A dynamic of addiction
Hard times are ahead. Africa is unprepared: just over 1 per cent of the population is vaccinated, beds in intensive care units or oxygen machines are not enough, and the death rate among seriously ill people is higher than the average world. But the situation is not desperate. Vaccines are the best protection societies can get, and greatly reduce the chances of serious illness, hospitalization and death. But, as experience has shown, even in the rich West they do not solve every problem. And without universal vaccination they will not replace other measures like masks and social distancing. African countries may not have vaccines, but many are capable of implementing measures such as information campaigns, testing, contact tracing and confinement. They are not solely dependent on the goodwill of their white saviors.

The West has behaved abominably about vaccine supplies, accumulating reserves it doesn’t need for people who don’t want to get vaccinated. Even when he donated doses, as the UK recently did, they were batches so close to the expiration date that distribution difficulties could render them useless. Even the one billion doses offered by the G7 countries seem like a drop in the bucket, as seven billion people around the world live in developing countries. Kenyan writer Nanjala Nyabola stressed the “dependency dynamic” generated by the West, which denies African countries the opportunity to buy vaccines and opposes the suspension of patents, which would allow developing countries to produce vaccines.

The strategy of shaming the rich and forcing them to behave well, however, has never produced results. It would be better to put African governments, such as the Kenyan one, in front of their responsibilities for the inability to prepare the population for the fight against the virus. Across the continent, states have adopted a security approach, which instead of doctors used the police to manage the pandemic. In Kenya, until recently, the talk of hand hygiene, face masks and social distancing had practically disappeared, with the government focusing on vaccine research. However, on July 30, as the delta variant threatened to bring the health system to its knees, the government announced new restrictions, extending the curfew and banning rallies. But the behavior of the Kenyan government and others across the continent leaves much to be desired. In the west of the country, the delta variant is wreaking havoc, mainly due to reckless public management.

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Even with regard to vaccine apartheid, Africa is no longer the “desperate continent” of the Western imagination. The people and governments of the continent can do much to prevent the specter of mortality and mass misery. Taking responsibility, more than charity, is perhaps the continent’s best tool for getting out of the pandemic.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)

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