Africa’s sick get sicker as serious ailments are ignored in Covid-19 pandemic

A German medical doctor, checks on a sick patient in Dubie, Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in this file photo. Picture: GETTY IMAGES/PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON

“We are deeply concerned about the potential impact on HIV, TB and malaria,” said Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which spends more than $4bn a year in over 100 countries. “The indirect cost in terms of lives could be greater than the direct cost from Covid.”

In the west and centre, health experts were well aware of the dangers of a pandemic after dealing with the Ebola virus that’s killed more than 13,000 people from Sierra Leone to Congo in the past decade. Nigeria built isolation wards in stadiums; in Ghana, residents of the biggest cities were immediately confined to their homes.

But the human cost is becoming evident as African nations are forced to divert health workers and supplies away from a range of other diseases. Regular health services are being affected, too. Zambia, for instance, reconfigured its main TB centre to fight Covid-19, using staff from one of its biggest hospitals. All elective surgeries were suspended, pharmacies are running out of stock and the number of people coming for treatment of other ailments has dropped sharply, said Naeem Dalal, a doctor in Lusaka.

Vaccination campaigns that would have prevented some 21 million children from getting measles were cancelled in five African countries, including some of the world’s poorest — the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan.

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