World Bank-funded Projects Management Unit, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso
Public Health and Research, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso.
BMJ Glob Health. 2021 May;6(5). doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004762.
The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent's health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.
世界仍在与持续的 COVID-19 大流行作斗争。虽然许多国家目前正在经历疫情的第二波高峰，但非洲尽管是最后一个受到该病毒影响的大陆，却没有像其他大陆那样遭受那么大的破坏。例如，截至 2021 年 3 月 14 日，拥有 3.67 亿人口的西非已确诊 COVID-19 病例 412178 例，死亡 5363 例；而美国的确诊病例数接近 3000 万例，死亡人数为 53 万，尽管美国的人口略少（3.28 亿）。为了解释这一现象，人们提出了几种假设。一种假设是，非洲国家利用过去流行病的经验，建立了弹性和应对策略，这可能有助于保护非洲大陆的卫生系统免受不堪重负。西非卫生组织的这份实践论文介绍了该地区各国如何在第一年利用系统、基础设施、所开发的能力和 2014 年埃博拉病毒病疫情期间的经验来调动支持以应对大流行的情况。
