With its weak health institutions, Africa’s strongest bet against the spreading coronavirus which originated from China should be prevention informed by more research about the disease, says a young Gambian doctor based in the Turkish capital Ankara.
The disease is a group of viruses in mammals and birds which can cause respiratory infections in the form of common cold, flu and pneumonia in humans.
Other variations are the more serious SARS, and MERS which can lead to death in humans.
Baboucarr Camara tells the African Press Agency that the novel coronavirus is a family of viruses that has already proven to be deadly in central China where precautionary measures against it have been lax before the disease struck.
At least 304 people in Wuhan had died of the disease and there are strong indications that it is spreading worldwide including in the Philippines since it was discovered on January 7.
This has prompted the World Health Organisation to declare it a global health emergency, a move which has left even developed countries like the United States deeply concerned.
Although Africa has no known case of the viral disease save a scare in Cote d’Ivoire, countries on the continent with weak and sometimes non-existent health systems have gone into preventive mode, with flights to China temporarily grounded in Kenya, Ethiopia and Rwanda:
Botswana has intensified its screening of travellers and South Africa is putting its medical facilities in a state of high alert.
“The preparedness of our health systems in Africa at the best of times is ineffective and at worst catastrophic so what we can do to prevent the spread of the disease is to first of all close or monitor our borders and quarantine all suspicious cases” he advises.
Camara says since Africa did not have an impressive record against dealing with viral diseases such as Ebola for example, there is every reason to “lock the stable door before the horse ever has a chance of bolting unchecked”.
He adds: “We all witnessed how ill-equipped health systems in poverty-stricken Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea struggled to deal with a virulent outbreak of Ebola in 2014” and how it still continues to pose a challenge several years after the epidemic was declared over.
“Africa should not repeat the same mistake by waiting for it to strike…and if the fatalities in China serve any purpose it is to teach us that being forewarned is to be forearmed’, Camara, a pharmacist by training, points out.
According to him, health practitioners on the continent should immerse themselves in research about the nature of the disease which displays flu-like symptoms, in addition to common cold and pneumonia which can be deadly for those who contract it.
Originally from animals like rats, snakes, its other symptoms are fever, running nose, constant headache, diarrhea and nausea.
Camara warns that although there are as yet no known or verified case of the virus in any African country, parasites are for the most part unseen by the naked human eye but can move anywhere unknowingly and quickly based on the movement of people especially from China in this case.
“In a globalised and increasingly interconnected world, all it takes for a virus to spread from one end of the globe to another is people’s movements and African countries far from taking chances should quarantine all suspicious cases especially with people coming from China” he says.
In his opinion, “we should better be safe than sorry”.
AS/APA