The COVID-19 pandemic has galvanized the development of more than 120 health technology innovations that have been piloted or adopted in Africa, said a new World Health Organization (WHO) analysis released on Friday.
The study of 1000 new or modifications of existing technologies that have been developed worldwide to target different areas of the COVID-19 response finds that Africa accounts for 12.8% of the innovations.
The response areas include surveillance, contact tracing, community engagement, treatment, laboratory systems and infection, prevention and control.
In Africa, 57.8% of the technologies were ICT-driven, 25% were based on 3D printing and 10.9% were robotics. The ICT-based innovations include WhatsApp Chatbots in South Africa, self-diagnostic tools in Angola, contact tracing apps in Ghana and mobile health information tools in Nigeria. The countries with the most innovations were South Africa (13%), Kenya (10%), Nigeria (8%) and Rwanda (6%).
“COVID-19 is one of the most serious health challenges in a generation, but it is also an opportunity to drive forward innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurship in life-saving health technologies,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa was quoted as saying .
“It’s great to see the youthful energy of the continent fired up to fight COVID-19. Solar-powered automatic handwashing tools, mobile applications that build on Africa’s rapidly growing connectivity. These home-grown innovations are uniquely adapted to the African context,” he added.
Earlier this year, all 47 African Member-States in the WHO African Region adopted a WHO strategy for scaling up health innovations in Africa. By 2023, 80% of all Member States agreed to perform needs assessments to identify critical gaps in their health systems and will have established coordination mechanisms to scale up innovations.
MG/abj/APA