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The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence: Africa, the pandemic and healthcare independence

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Africa, the pandemic and healthcare independence

29/01/2022 GMT

Coronavirus: The Evidence

BBC World Service - The Evidence, Coronavirus: The Evidence, Africa, the pandemic and healthcare independence

The new momentum for vaccines, medicines and tests to be made for Africa in Africa

How vaccine nationalism and the global failure to share life-saving tests and treatments galvanised Africa to push for healthcare self-sufficiency and independence

In a special edition of The Evidence, Claudia Hammond and her panel of experts focus on Africa, on how the more than fifty countries on the continent, home to 1.3 billion people and the most youthful population in the world, have fared, two years into the pandemic.

African scientists have been key players in the global response, sequencing variants of the virus and sharing this vital information with the world.

But there’s been huge frustration and anger on the continent about the way Africa has, yet again, found itself at the back of the global queue for life-saving tests, treatments and vaccines. 

The sense that the global health system isn’t set up to deliver for Africa has prompted what’s been described as unprecedented solidarity, and galvanised calls for increased healthcare independence, self-sufficiency and a new public health order for the continent. 

This includes plans to manufacture the vaccines, medicines and tests that Africa needs to increase its health security in Africa for Africa.

In The Evidence, the head of the World Health Organisation in Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, tells Claudia it has been “extremely devastating” to watch history repeating itself (just like the HIV pandemic and the millions of African lives lost because they were unable to access life-saving antiretroviral medication) as international solidarity faltered and Africa struggled to access vital supplies. 

The Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal (along with centres in South Africa and Rwanda) has a key role in pan-African plans for increased health sufficiency. Yellow Fever vaccines have long been made here but the plan is that later this year, mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 and eventually for other diseases like Lassa and Rift Valley fevers, will be manufactured at this and other sites. 

Institute head Professor Amadou Sall, a virologist and public health specialist says producing vaccines, medicines and tests will reduce the dependency of Africa on the global community and increase health security. 

Dr Yodi Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance and WHO Special Envoy to the Access to Covid Tools Accelerator, the ACT-Accelerator, says the pandemic has laid bare a failure of global political leadership, where a life in Lagos has been viewed as worth less than a life in London. 

The equity gaps in access to the tools needed to fight Covid-19, she says, must be closed, and there are hopes that a high level global conference, “Port to Arms: Africa Responds – Vaccine Equity, Delivery and Manufacturing”, in Abuja, Nigeria, in February, will lead to a renewed commitments to vaccinate the world and end this pandemic.  

Produced by: Fiona Hill and Maria Simons 
Studio Engineer: Donald McDonald and Tim Heffer

Picture: A medical syringe pointing towards a whole lot of green viruses, Credit: David Malan/Getty Images

The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence

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Claudia Hammond is joined by experts to answer questions about the coronavirus Covid-19.

In The Evidence Claudia Hammond is joined by an expert scientific panel to answer questions from the audience on a variety of aspects of the coronavirus and Covid 19, from the impact of lockdowns and self isolation on the spread of the disease, to the question of who should be tested and the search for treatments. 
Professor Vivek Jha, Executive Director, of the George Institute for Global Health, India, talks about the situation in his country where a lockdown was announced four hours before it began.

Dr Lyndsey Broadbent, a virologist at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, explains what is now known about the biology of the virus and why it causes serious disease in some people and no symptoms in others. 
Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist from St Andrews University, discusses the issue of stigma that’s being experienced by some people who have had Covid-19. 

Claudia also hears from a psychiatrist at the University of Verona in northern Italy, which has taken the brunt of cases in the country about some of the most serious consequences for doctors and nurses, and the general population.

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