The World Health Organisation has warned that on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, West Africa is facing new outbreaks of the viral haemorrhagic fevers Marburg and Ebola, risking huge strains on ill-equipped health systems.
The WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, says the new outbreaks show the multitude of challenges governments are fighting in parallel with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moeti says they are particularly concerned about the situation in the Ivory Coast – which has started vaccinating health workers against Ebola in the commercial capital Abidjan on Monday.
On Saturday the country declared its first case of Ebola since 1994. Authorities said it was an isolated case of an 18-year-old girl who travelled from neighbouring Guinea.
Health systems in West Africa in particular are weaker than in other parts of the continent, she added, although the WHO did not give any specific numbers regarding staffing levels or hospital bed occupancy rates across the region.
Meanwhile, WHO data shows that West Africa in the past month recorded the highest number of COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began, and COVID-19 cases are surging in Cote d’Ivoire,Guinea and Nigeria, all three of which have recently been hit with other outbreaks.
Separately, Ivory Coast has identified an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu near the commercial capital Abidjan and has taken steps to curb its spread, the government said on Thursday. “Facing three outbreaks at the same time, for any health system, it’s a very difficult situation,” Mamadou Samba, Ivory Coast’s Director General of Health said. Samba did not respond directly to a question about how many of the many dozens of people who rode on a bus with the girl who travelled to Ivory Coast from neighbouring Guinea had been identified.
