Itself is set up to benefit those who understand people who actually believe things that are not true that is a crisis for democracy is a crisis of concentration the bottom line on aljazeera. Are african countries staying ahead of the coronavirus the continent has some of the worlds lowest infection and death rates but always getting the whole picture of whats really happening this is inside story. Hello welcome to the program and its. When covert 19 started to spread around the world aid workers warned of disaster for africa fearing for weak and poorly funded Health Systems in many places and crowded cities making social distancing impossible but african countries appear to be managing data from Johns HopkinsUniversity Shows relatively few cases in Subsaharan Africa compared to the hot spots in the United States europe and latin america just under 4000 african deaths so far and 130000 infections senegal has one of the worlds highest recovery rates research is there a trial in a testing kit that can return results in 10 minutes and costs just under a dollar in ghana the World Health Organization is looking into an approach called pool Testing Health workers analyzed multiple blood samples and conducted individual tests only if they find a positive results south africa as the continents highest number of infections a tough lock down a slow the spread of the disease but many poor South Africans have lost their jobs in tanzania opposition politicians accuse the government of downplaying the outbreak social media videos show people in protective suits burying corona victims at night Scientists Say theyre not getting a full picture across the continent because of low testing rates the World Health Organization predicts nearly a quarter of a 1000000000 africans will be infected over the next year. The actual number of days are not as high which suggests to me that we have actually kind of dodged a bullet but were not out of the woods yet because if you look at a country like america especially new york when there are i think 3 or 4 weeks ahead of us in terms of the count but about 45 weeks ago they didnt seem to have any big problem then they had that exponential sarge which we have yet to find here. Lets introduce our guests in johannesburg we have Shabir Mattie director of the south African MedicalResearch Council and a member of the south African Ministerial Advisory Committee on covert 19 in ugandas capital kampala doctor was saying fellow at the Georgia Institute for Global Health and in yonder in cameroon boom Regional Representative of epicenter africa the Research Branch of Doctors Without Borders welcome to you all ill start with you should bear has the spread of corona virus been contained or just delayed in africa. Well i think its a combination of 2 things its probably been delayed compared to what this happened in the Northern Hemisphere a quite important as you have heard it. To destin that i did africa is among some of us in the row so the country would offer us just in great except our side of the secs militias right now is south africa where the destiny made this about the 1000 of the population in how the african countries as an example the maji had the destiny you know coming to the 1000 of the population in contrast menu item countries suggesting break is a particularly good to 15 times higher than what it is in south africa so its really difficult to sort of make any sort of meaningful analysis in terms of the number of cases that really are you know africa the type of reports that we see up based on cases that have been investigated and obviously in the absence of actually investigating you something youre not going to report anything some of the date that its coming out including south africa reality and that epicenter meant he should have covered many in africa including back number of cases as well as in terms of the number of deaths but at the same time i think create reality that if we had an early stage in terms of the greats in africa compared to other Northern Hemisphere i couldnt be or what do weeks ago all of what you are in any staff ricco all the rest of us missing something is the worst yet to come or has it been successfully contained so in fact because i think a number of things are happening so this happened to be in a good way. They really thought oh the u. S. Looked down even before we saw any cases in the country for instance in uganda we we instituted we closed schools large gatherings places of worship and i date up to the 1st case came into the country closed but International Amplitude have been serious control at all borders so theres been a little bit spent on making sure that the virus doesnt get into the. Community so there is virtually no Community Transmission but then i was out of. Public private transportation with a curfew beginning. And i think betty so it might be a rarity that me being given very little opportunity to about so i think the real test is going to be once we leave those locked. And we begin to have Community Transmission in west africa generally there seems to be infection rates a generally higher than in eastern and Southern Africa how is it being successfully contained there what do you think its always interesting to figure out the diversity among countries because if you take even in west africa you have nigeria ghana i was very high a number of cases as you are doing right now but how was a country like total where the number of cases definitely less done done a 1000 so what is happening trans depends on the dynamics in the in the country the mobility to number of kids that has been reported and then you will have those countries with quite expulse dont have to cant fight a number of measures. In the beginning since right now we are seeing an increase but what we see currently in cameroon for example a way to have been some measure to lift a lot down we can see that seems to me almost the number of kids are just as double. That so depending on the country and even if we did a country you will see a diversity in how the funding is going on so we cannot say that its been content we have to be present and to see how. The feet are going on across africa theyre been lockdowns to varying degrees of severity youve got a very severe one in south africa but is that locked out only dinette delaying the inevitable do you think youre going to see an explosion of cases as that lock down is reduced. Yes i think its very important to understand the object of supplying the lockdown to reason why south africa and many other african countries went into a locked up is very different from the reason why the United States and many European Countries went into lockdown it was sort of an opportunity to try to contain the spread of the virus and from many countries most countries including south africa unfortunately that wasnt successful but the good things used to break the transmission of the vitus for pete of time which allows casket facilities to bet that to become get picked up in terms of dealing with what hes going to be in the event that you dont get you know eventually d such in terms of number of cases that its going to happen a lot and its going to sort of moved at a few weeks into the future not that immediately and oh yes a lot faster facilities to bed to become but the problem but the major problem in terms of implementation of lockdowns in africa is that the most important part of the lockdown at that stage if youre wanting to contain the spread of divides its dependent on your budget to guess at scale to identify the infectious cases at an early stage to trace a context that context and department deem it in south africa unfortunately thats tepid you wasnt in place at the time when the lockdown was implemented and in other african countries even less of that in south africa so what they saw happen in south africa is an example of a 5 week period of the locked up he said in the 1st 2 weeks of the lockdown the average number of cases what that did to 5 but in my book that separate that in the 1st 2 weeks of the lockdown was actually the best in a number of tested to have been done before the locked up in the last week up to lock down the number of cases each day increased an average of 400 and the reason why i think this took it to 400. 00 instead there was a danforth in place in terms of the amount of testing that was done nowt the biggest challenge that africa faces he said we did not kept at the but it didnt the best city to do guesting the way should be done to be able to come to roll identify hot spots and control the rate of transmission of. Right and that is a major challenge including unfortunately one of the motives for a country which is article ok however i see you nodding away that you recognize similarities with how the lockdown went and the effect of it in uganda we have certainly theres been a challenge with securing enough test kits so that. I seriously mitigation and indeed the expectation was that during the lockdown. That we post our Health Care System that we put in place all of what it takes for Health Workers to to be able to be sufficiently protected but also to have sufficient numbers of test case skilled workers that would do the Contract Tracing test in isolation quarantining and all of what goes into containing the infections are the indications are that we are coming through are. Somewhat relaxing the lockdowns and may be lifting some element of the lock down and im not entirely sure that the ministry is our mission is that we are behind on tech contest. And i think the other point about the knockdown is that while the. The intention was to reduce Peoples Movement in many areas where people were very nice hand to mouth they were not able to stay in their homes and in fact the instructions stay home and stay safe was unrealistic that people really needed to get out of their homes and and look for food and be able to surprise a lot of them so theyre not down in certain areas have not been as effective as they could or be and yet weve heard from some african countries how effective tracing has been tracking and tracing because you have to do before previous outbreaks has been effective in cameroon to try to track. The trucking are being quite. Impressive especially during their 1st the 1st case that were having in yeah one day in the capital city but let me just come back to the lockdown because cameron is quite particular in the way that we have not followed the law down the way other people or the country has been implementing so what we did actually was to close the bar and restaurant after 6 pm. And to reduce the number of people in the public transport so which means people are still able to move between cities and thats why as compared to what you will see in other countries i will recall is even uganda and so on the way you have a centralised number of kids in the capital city in cameroon you have the kids in the 10 region of a country with the highest number in the center where you have what way im currently yelland it in the what i but also in the west west region so each means that at that point the virus has the time to go we do in the community which make it very hard to contact risk because when you have the beginning of the outbreak and you are able to follow lets say 20 to 50 contact per patient thats steve feasible but when you reach a certain number or lets say it 5000 kids and each 1 may have 210102 contact that its become much more difficult to reach bushels now to think about what is the next strategy are we going to continue on Contact Tracing or are we going to do mass a t. V. Screening in a community so thats where we are currently ok i see not in a way that will come back to you in a 2nd but well just take us a short pause because earlier we mentioned how senegal is tackling the coronavirus our correspondent Nicholas Hogg went to take a closer look last month. Senegal is doing what most countries count testing everyone symptoms are not entering a Health Center for the Novel Coronavirus it has no shortage of testing kit thanks to this lab at the best researchers are developing a one dollar quick diagnose ticket originally made to test for dengue fever patients drop blood or saliva onto the devices and wait for a blood line to appear like a pregnancy test explains researcher i do sell. There is no need for a highly equipped lab its a simple test that can be done anywhere the idea is to record lee produce 2. 00 to 4000000. 00 kits not just for us but for african countries so that we can detect and isolate patients quickly. With only 50 ventilator machines for 16000000. 00 people senegalese engineer using a 3 d. Printing machine to produce more well imported ventilators cost 16000. 00 and this one is just 60. 00 coronavirus is one of many deadly infections the country is dealing with Lessons Learned from the aids epidemic the recent a bull outbreak were key in senegal strategy in dealing with the pandemic. Sheer when all this started your initial modeling said 120000 people would die in south africa because of covert 19 those were based on data from china then you revised down 245000. 575. 77 deaths so far so the seems an awful lot of deaths to come are we are we being too pessimistic. Yeah so just to correct that wasnt my models it was modest epididymis south africa but i think groups and he initiated i asked him about anything between 8000235000 extension 0 South Africans that to dine with because of Government Team and those figures more because something has been sort of time to move downwards to the estimate of the conflict a 1075. 00 im about the reality is really dont you know sort of thought it through as an example has to be made to put a hold of africa is begin to come to an end to the bank and to the end of 1000 people that might die from government in south africa makes up just in 5 percent of the african population so its very unlikely that youre going to be contributing to about the port au one of those debts so the answer is we do really dont know what we need to be cautious in terms of what this morning tells us in the process a lot of assumptions made which might not necessarily be applicable to the african context south africa as you mention in terms of the number of deaths so just under 2000 do expect a huge increase and on some fortunately its yes but not important thing that we need to really start continued i think is that when we talk afflicted 1000 or 75000. 00 people dying those stats are not going to necessarily take place over a single wave of the epidemic its probably going to be multiple waves which will probably explode continue right into trying to do one in 2022 and dad going to get cumulate that number gets at the going to take place over a period of time and thats also important when governments think about how to actually step the giants out on his plans because this is not a step that you that youre developing for 2 to 3 months or 3 to 5 months ago that 19 is not going to go away at the end of 2020 its going to be us thats with multiple waves and i think most scientists have now come to agree that you respect if we have enough high income country a low income country this is an agenda that you need to plan for for the next 2 years at least ok all of youve written about the 600. 00. And 66000000. 00 that the ugandan government borrowed from the European Union to go towards fighting coronavirus and then the corruption that happened with that money youre suggesting that ugandas kept a lid on the coronavirus by accident rather than design is that the case that could very well be true and i fear that if for whatever reason the debts that way expected dont happen could hurt we could if they have you know some chest thumping and i still that we done better than some countries that have more Robust Health care when in fact our sort out what we see is very mild cases or its internet people that are staying positive so i think that. There needs to be. Some kind of discussion around what exactly is it that weve done for there to be 0 number of deaths occur in a fire the other disturbing thing is that i think we can be way more focused too focused on the deaths that are a direct result of the virus and forget that every day that passes hundreds of ugandans are dying of all manner of illnesses some of which could have been someone with death could have been prevented if we didnt have lockdown so i think we need to look at the deaths that are happening as a result of the virus direct result and infection or they start happening because in fact weve been treated as serious lockdown and the population that was not prepared at all for the love and the government had done very little to support that nation through the extreme. You have all of has a point doesnt she i mean africa you have tb deaths h. I. V. Deaths deaths from malaria and dysentery killing millions of people a year across the continent has the law lockdowns doing more harm than good or by hiding for other deaths from other the illnesses and diseases disability when you actually put all your resources with a human. And risso Material Resources on fighting and converts it will defeat have an impact on your disease guarantee that there is an outbreak of cholera and cameroon you have measles my nutrition in chad and all those diseases will lead to an increased number of deaths of children because the list resorts to go and tracked those patients but something that is important to know is who people day when we look at the data that we have from cameroon from. Most of the people who are dying. And when you look at the confirmed cases in those 2 countries india syria iran 8 percent of the confirmed kids welcome morbidity 60 percent income rule as compared to 25 percent in china so that can also explain why you will have more left in this country as compared to africa because we also know that among the people who have. 5 percent of them will die as compared to 2 percent with people. So no lemole the population who are the more at risk i mention the commodities but also those age its also important in terms of strategy and so while ive been talking about looking down the entire population maybe something that we may want to do is to actually focus on the mall a treat people how can we make sure that how enders those with comorbidity we prevent them from connecting to order while to stop the transmission of the disease we can implement what has many cameroon we have many military Wearing Masks that is something critical. Is there anything to the argument we sometimes hear that people in living in africa might have better resistance to the novel virus because they have immune systems that are already fighting off various other illnesses you dont you dont seem to agree with that view certainly not i think thats a very simplistic sort of thinking in terms of why are we not seeing as. Any case a sister should be sitting in africa like i said my to be designed to bend by the logic absence of testing or modes in addition to injury at different stages in terms of. Making africa come to get to the Northern Hemisphere and i think thats because from disgust back to 2009 with trying to address an example the fewest number of cases given the strain for condemning the fewest number of cases that reported rape actually from africa and south asia yet at the end of the pandemic when they didnt have this in terms of excess of macavity they found at what in 52 percent of the dept of good because of swine flu that one actually got cutting africa and talk asia so does that suspension about not being diagnosed because they isnt getting capability and capacity so we really need to be cautious in terms of how we go i think theyre putting it into an effect in terms of coma but it is africa its probably worse off than many countries in europe so you dont have got the High Percentage of the population died out over the age of 65 says it as an example what Important Role to play isnt terms of developing severe disease and dying but the prevalence of things such as diabetes hypertension obesity in south africa as an example makes it extremely high it was bentley in terms of severe disease and not guilty and then we saw the doctor in direct effect well if its completely correct in fact at the end of the day what were going to see happen in africa is that a total modality because of the indirect effect of code in terms of the response to go over to the sort of fund that strategy is with locked up except that its going to be a much much greater then attack effect of that you need 7 estimates dead in the low didnt come country its just going to be between 250001 point 2000000 children that are going to die. Not the cost of government children Branded Products of the entities from coke that they going to attack the courts have been denied i did not get think access to essential Health Care Services and that is something countries need to start understanding and sucked up like a chicken to fight except locked up we had a 50 percent decrease in terms of the number of individuals that came forward forgetting for tuberculosis thats because got one of the highest incidence of the closest in to out what does it mean the lock down didnt cure tb it means that the day closer to the close its being delayed it means that those people are going to sections in the community infecting others and it means theyre going to have to come on because they delayed in terms of treatment initiation of cadets and other things that would not thinking about well its all of the attention is focused on government in all of weve just got time for a very quick for a global audience as dr professor shearers warned coronavirus is not going to go or away quickly are there any aspects of our lives that can go back to how they were or what will have to change forevermore the way we live so theres 11 thing we could walk away with that is very positive and thats that weve made a big to put in crew and patient you know the repeated course course for handwashing theyve been a large. Chunk of our population that didnt have any hand washing facilities that im going to now have a focus on what time and saw and so i would hope that thats one thing thats going to change the other thing that i hope we can walk away with and carry with us even as a pandemic progresses we actually invest in building towards the best Healthcare Systems the carrot and the unknown people have knocked us to imagine for medical services nor require assistance if they go into nearby in the middle of the night during the high few thats a death sentence and i think we need to change that sort what are we going to say really i think more about we need to invest in. Her bathrobe guesses what are we going to leave behind i think about thought that people need to paint with him earlier that somehow we can scrape through these kinds of graces because we really current and a lot of people are going to come d to hammering to that as there is out what the corporate parent yes folks were out of time unfortunately but thank you very much to all of our guests should be a matty all of copper saying and yap boom thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com ford slash a. J. The inside story is also join the conversation on twitter we are at a. J. Inside story and i am at 0 for me Bernard Smith and the whole team here in the heart by. 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