In the weekly press conference of the World Health Organization, WHO’s Africa director said the continent was heading for a third wave of the global pandemic, one it was ill-prepared to face. This as lockdown-weary Africans watch the developed world emerge under protection of the vaccine, still unwilling to part with millions of unused doses.
“The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising,” WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said June 3. “Many African hospitals and clinics are still far from ready to cope with a huge rise in critically ill patients,” as resources run thin, and the days of international largess have passed. Infection spikes are occurring across the continent — likely spurred by the “opening up” of increasing travel, combined with the increasing virility of variants — in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the WHO has detected an “exponential rise” specifically in Kinshasa; Uganda, where cases jumped 131% in one week; and also in Angola and Namibia.
Perhaps the worst case on the continent however, is still South Africa, where a once-prepared country has watched as a third wave within two (winter) seasons has now forced a return of Level 2 lockdown conditions, sapping any remaining vitality out of defenses. Virus spikes are again occurring from West Cape and East Cape coastal provinces (cities of Cape Town and Gqeberha) as well as the inland province of Gauteng (home of Pretoria and Johannesburg). Here we find proof that the “global health” goes far beyond hospitals.
In April, a fire broke out in Johannesburg’s Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Only a valiant two-day mobilization of rescue workers of all types prevented any loss of life. In addition to being “water-challenged,” the city also suffers from a “well-documented” shortage of fire engines, according to the Daily Maverick. The single fire engine which responded to the fire had to “ferry” its own water from an “off-site” hydrant because of failures in nearby infrastructure.
