WHO Ghana Rep lauds African leaders for ‘early’ lockdowns

The Country Representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Neema Kimambo, has lauded African leaders for ensuring lockdowns and border closures early enough.

According to her, failure of such a move undid the Western world as most the nations in the Old Continent are recording high cases of the the deadly Coronavirus disease.

Dr Kimambo was speaking on TV3’s The Key Points on Saturday.

She said the case counts of Covid-19 in Africa are relatively small as a result of the quick identification of the viral effects and the containment measures adopted by various heads of state and government.

“So, we have a curve that is more flattened but what has happened in some of these western countries is that the curve went to high peaks,” she noted.

Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Tunisia, Senegal, Togo, Uganda and Rwanda are among African countries that have declared lockdowns and closed their borders.

Most of these lockdowns are for a period of 14 days.

Dr Kimambo lauded these moves by the various governments, saying it will mitigate and contain the spread of the disease.

She said what the African region of WHO is targeting is that cases recorded do not overwhelm the health systems in various countries like it is happening in some European nations.

‘Solidarity trial’

She revealed that WHO has called for interests from countries across the globe to join in a “solidarity trial” that is currently ongoing.

“Currently, we have 74 countries across the globe who have registered their interest and have joined the trial.

“There are 200 patients who have enrolled.”

She said WHO seeks more countries to join in the trial, which sees the use of already existing drugs to treat Covid-19.

Since the first Covid-19 case broke out in December, 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in the Hubei Province of the Asian nation, 1,225,360 cases have been confirmed with 252,615 recovered patients.

Over 66,000 deaths have been recorded with Italy being the hardest hit.