JOHANNESBURG — Africa’s coronavirus cases have surged 43 percent in the past week but its countries are dangerously behind in the global race for scarce medical equipment. Ten nations have no ventilators at all.
Outbid by richer countries, and not receiving medical gear from top aid donor the United States, African officials scramble for solutions as reported virus cases have climbed past 27,000. Even in the best scenario, the United Nations says 74 million test kits and 30,000 ventilators will be needed by the continent’s 1.3 billion people this year. Very few are in hand.
“We are competing with the developed world,” said John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The very future of the continent will depend on how this matter is handled.”
Politicians instinctively try to protect their own people and “we know that sometimes the worst in human behavior comes out,” said Simon Missiri, Africa director with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, urging an equitable approach to help developing nations.
The crisis has jolted African nations into creating a pooled purchasing platform under the African Union to improve negotiating power. Within days of its formation, the AU landed more than 100,000 test kits from a German source. The World Health Organization is pitching in; it has reported fewer than 2,000 ventilators across 41 African countries.
On Friday, the WHO hosted the launch of a global effort to ensure that vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics reach all countries, rich or poor.
Africa also benefits from the U.N.’s largest emergency humanitarian operation in decades, with medical cargo including hundreds of ventilators arriving in Ethiopia this month and sent to all countries across the continent. Another shipment from the Jack Ma Foundation is on the way.
But Africa isn’t holding out a begging bowl, Nkengasong said. Instead, it’s asking for a fair crack at markets — and approaching China for “not donations. Quotas that Africa as a continent can purchase.”
Such efforts are a response to a global thicket of protectionism: More than 70 countries have restricted exports of medical items, putting Africa in a “perilous position,” the U.N. says. New travel bans have closed borders and airports, badly wrenching supply chains.
“It’s like people hoarding toilet paper, which I still don’t understand,” Amer Daoudi, the U.N. World Food Program’s senior director of operations, told The Associated Press. “Countries in Europe and North America are paying attention to their own internal needs, but we think that will ease off very soon.”
Some nations, after securing equipment, have complicated delivery by causing cargo to stall at ports; 43 have closed their borders.
The global supply crisis is so pressing that the U.N. General Assembly last week approved a resolution urging countries to immediately end “speculation and undue stockpiling.”
