Africa Health Research Institute Deputy Director, Professor Thumbi Ndung’u, says although South Africa is prepared to deal with the, the availability of resources needed to deal with such an epidemic might pose a challenge.
The coronavirus, which is currently gripping China, has so far claimed more than 600 lives. According to Ndung’u , South Africa is lacking when it comes to resources such as clinical facilities to deal with such a virus. “We need to strengthen our response systems in terms of our ability to diagnose the cases and in terms of clinical facilities to deal with the clinical cases and manage them medically and for infection control measures. I think that could be challenging depending on the number of cases that we get but considering that we are likely to see a few cases, if we can respond very quickly in dealing with any responsive cases that will help us a lot before it becomes a big epidemic.
In the video below, Dr Zweli Mkhize briefs the media about South African’s preparedness in dealing with the coronavirus:“The first thing we do not want to do is to panic because this is an infection that is primarily taking place in China but has not been to Africa yet and hopefully it stays like that. Government has been giving information but this is a new virus, so there is a lot that we do not know about this virus and how it is spread.
“As a continent, in general, we have poor infrastructure and this is a major concern. As a continent we may not very well be prepared because should this virus come to Africa our health systems would not be able to cope and we saw this even with Ebola, we do not have enough diagnostic facilities and we do not have clinical facilities to isolate people and make sure that they are treated and to go home only after they have either recovered or the infection has been ruled out.
The SA Public Health System is struggling to deal with minor ailments, it remains to be seen how it could handle such killer diseases!🙏