Anticipating a surge in patients with COVID-19, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has called on retired medical staffs, in-training medical professionals, unemployed medical school graduates and other volunteers, to join the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the MoH, the health professionals, who respond to the national call, will be assigned to various roles, based on their academic background and services in different units including laboratory surveillance, point of entry screening, risk communication and community engagement, and case management isolation,
The registration of health professionals is officially underway via the official website of the ministry which went live on April 01, 2020.
Before the virus overwhelms the country, the government of Ethiopia has already embarked on various preventative measures to combat the virus, and has setup, in a recently inaugurated mental health facility, Eka Kotebe General Hospital, an isolation and treatment center for COVID-19 cases. Other 134 quarantine and isolation centers have also recently been identified and arranged.
The hospital has installed around 172 health professionals, 22 medical doctors and 150 nurses to be in the fight against the virus.
As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise rapidly across the globe, critical shortage of healthcare workers and personal protective equipment’s (PPE) have become a crucial part in the global fight against the virus.
Even where well-established healthcare systems have found it hard to cope with the deluge of patients and healthcare workers falling ill, and for Ethiopia, with one of the world’s lowest doctor to patient ratio, shortage of health professionals and PPE’s would be alarming.
In Ethiopia, by Saturday April 4, there are 38 COVID-19 patients.
Retired health professionals, medical students called to help the nation
IGAD Heads of State and Government Adopt a Regional Approach to Combating COVID-19
The Heads of State and Government of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) convened a Video Conference to deliberate on the regional IGAD strategy to combat the spread of the CoronaVirus (COVID-19) in the region.
In his remarks the IGAD Chair Prime Minister Hamdok of Sudan, noted that the Coronavirus represented a profound threat to the IGAD region. He added that it would significantly impact on the economies of the IGAD region and roll back gains made towards realizing the Sustainable Development Goals in the region. The IGAD Chair said that the virus was a threat shared by all humanity and noted that it does not recognise international borders. As a result, the IGAD Chair laid emphasis on IGAD Member States developing a collective and coordinated strategy to combat COVID-19 and other pandemic diseases for the region.
The Executive Secretary of IGAD made his opening statement, reinforcing on the need for a collective regional strategy to combat COVID-19 in the IGAD region and calling for the establishment of an IGAD regional emergency fund for the control of pandemic diseases as well as for the strengthening of health systems in the region. The IGAD Heads of State and Government submitted detailed reports on the status of coronavirus infections, fatalities and recoveries in their respective countries, as well as the measures they are undertaking to combat the menace.
ATA, Mercy Corps sign MoU for the use of a digital platform to enable data-driven support to Farmers
The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and Mercy Corps’ AgriFin program have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support ATA implement develop a data hub through which ATA will be able to derive insights from, and provide data-driven holistic solutions to farmers. The data hub will also enable ATA to implement a digital farm-management tool enabling farmers to make data-driven decisions, and improve existing processes and performances within ATA’s Farmer Production Clusters (FPC) program. The agreement was signed by ATA CEO Khalid Bomba and Mercy Corps/Agrifin Program Director, Leesa Shrader, in Addis Ababa and Nairobi.
“This partnership is an exciting and bold initiative for the two institutions. Since the initiation of the partnership last year, Mercy Corps’ AgriFin program has been supporting the ATA and its FPC program to design and test high-impact digital solutions for smallholder farmers. These solutions will ultimately be scaled, benefiting the 2.5 million smallholder farmers under the FPCs,” ATA CEO Khalid Bomba said.
Through the ATA-Mercy Corps AgriFin partnership, ATA is piloting Cropin’s SmartFarm platform, which will enable the organization to obtain real-time insights on the FPCs across various geographies, enabling it to provide timely recommendations and guidance to individual smallholder farmers as well as clusters based on these insights.
“ATA has always been at the forefront of technology innovation for the agricultural sector in Ethiopia, indeed across Africa,” said AgriFin Program Director, Leesa Shrader. She added, “Mercy Corps is honored to work with the ATA team to help them take their work to the next level, combining data and building responsive digital systems which can inform government, private sector and smallholder farmers’ critical work in agriculture, building a solid foundation for Ethiopia’s food security and economic growth.”
Coronavirus – Africa: WHO concerned as COVID-19 cases accelerate in Africa
With more than 6000 COVID-19 cases reported in Africa, the virus is threatening fragile health systems on the continent. Infections are increasingly spreading not only between African countries but within different localities in the hardest-hit countries.
For instance, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where COVID-19 cases were at first confined to Kinshasa, now a handful of cases have been reported in the easternmost regions of the country that were until recently in the grip of an Ebola outbreak. In South Africa, all provinces have now reported cases. The outbreaks in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal are also widespread.
“Case numbers are increasing exponentially in the African region,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa “It took 16 days from the first confirmed case in the Region to reach 100 cases. It took a further 10 days to reach the first thousand. Three days after this, there were 2000 cases, and two days later we were at 3000.”
To contain COVID-19, many countries in Africa are implementing measures, which restrict gatherings and the movement of people. Nationwide lockdowns are in effect in Kenya, Uganda, the Republic of the Congo and elsewhere. However, governments must use these measures in a considered, evidence-based manner, and make sure that people can continue to access basic necessities.
As many people in the region live in crowded conditions or work in the informal sector and need to earn money daily to survive, it is important that countries make provisions to ensure that people can still access essential services. WHO is working closely with national governments and United Nations partners including the World Food Programme (WFP) to plan for these needs.
Dr Moeti and Lola Castro, the WFP Regional Director for Southern Africa, addressed the restrictive measures during a virtual media briefing held today by the WHO Regional Office for Africa with the support of the World Economic Forum.
“For socially restrictive measures to be effective, they must be accompanied by strong, sustained and targeted public health measures that locate, isolate, test and treat COVID-19 cases,” Dr Moeti pointed out.
