COVID-19: Burkina Faso becomes the first Sub-Saharan Africa to record coronavirus death
Africa has been urged to prepare for the worst as Burkina Faso reports one Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) death, first in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The country reported its first Coronavirus death on Wednesday 18th, March 2020 involving a high ranking politician in Burkina Faso.
The number of infections in Burkina Faso had risen by seven to 27 – and that one of them, a 62-year old diabetic woman, had died overnight.
The country’s main opposition party, the Union for progress and change (UPC), said in a statement that the victim was its lawmaker Rose-Marie Compaore, the first vice president of the Parliament.
Burkina Faso has now ordered the closure of all schools and banned public and private gatherings until the end of April as one of the measures undertaken by the government to curb the deadly Coronavirus infections from increasing in the country.
In addition to these measures, religious leaders in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Senegal said that they have closed services to protect the faithful.
Head World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a news conference in Geneva urged African countries to wake up because in the past few days there has been a significant rise of Coronavirus cases.
“Cut it from the bud, expecting that the worst can happen. The best advice for Africa is to prepare for the worst and prepare today,” Ghebreyesus said.
“In other countries, we have seen how the virus accelerates after a certain tipping point,” Ghebreyesus said. He adds that Africa has lagged behind the global curve for Coronavirus infections and deaths.
A 2016 analysis by the Rand Corporation, a US think-tank, found that of the 25 countries in the world that were most vulnerable to infectious outbreaks, 22 were in Africa – the other were Afghanistan, Yemen and Haiti.
The report identified a “Disease hot spot belt” extending across the southern rim of the Sahara through the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, where many countries are struggling with conflicts.
“Were a communicable disease to emerge within this chain of countries, it could easily spread across borders in all directions, a belted by high overall vulnerability and a string of weak national health systems along the way,” the report warned.
Given Africa’s weak health infrastructure, poverty, conflicts, poor sanitation and urban crowding, experts have issued a warning about the perils for the continent.
As of Wednesday, a tally of reported cases, compiled by AFP, in Africa stood at more than 600 cases. Out of these, 16 cases have been fatal, 6 in Egypt, 6 in Algeria, two in Morocco, one in Sudan and one in Burkina Faso.
This figure is relatively low compared to the rest of the world. The global death toll is 8,999 out of 221,926 infections and out of these 85,791 recovered from the disease.
Ghebreyesus in his remarks said that probably there must be undetected cases or unreported cases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
He says the 233 infections recorded do not reflect the exact figures.
