Home

The continent needs to a strong health system: WHO Regional Office for Africa

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Programme Manager for Emergency Preparedness at the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa, Dr Ambrose Talisuna, says COVID-19 has shown us that there needs to be a strong health system on the continent.

His comments come after the WHO commended South Africa for its determined efforts that have helped to bend the COVID-19 pandemic curve.

It says it is greatly encouraged by the ongoing measures to suppress the spread of COVID-19.

The WHO says to tackle the pandemic South Africa took decisive steps such as instituting response coordination mechanisms at all levels, setting up control interventions for all critical pillars of the response, and imposing public health and social measures, including movement.

South Africa moves to Alert Level 1 at midnight on Sunday.

Speaking in an interview with SABC News, Talisuna says, “What COVID-19 has shown us is that we need a strong health system, we need what is called health system resilience. Health system resilience is the ability to maintain the delivery of essential service in the absence of shocking events. When you have a shocking event like COVID-19 you need to have a strong health system and if you look here in South Africa in the early phases when the lockdown was implemented, South Africa wrapped up case management capacity, South Africa wrapped up community screening and testing.”

Click below to watch the full interview:

In the video below, WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom gave a COVID-19 update:

Author

MOST READ