COVID-19 and Public Health in Africa: a call for new Perspectives in Health System Strengthening
COVID-19 and Public Health in Africa: a call for new Perspectives in Health System Strengthening
Abstract
Africa accounts for nearly half of all deaths resulting from communicable diseases globally. A deteriorating health system can be attributed to these deaths. Unfortunately, most African countries have some of the weakest health systems. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that strong health systems are critical for the improvement of health outcomes and for accelerating progress towards the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health. This has led to the rise of health system strengthening as a political agenda for countries in the WHO African Region. At a time when countries in this region are facing an economic downturn, the novel coronavirus, “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2)” adds to the challenges faced in health system strengthening. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed major weaknesses in health systems globally, presenting a major threat to the already fragile health systems in Africa, revealing the urgent need for stronger health systems in Africa. In this paper, we present an updated literature review of the pertinent gaps in Africa’s health systems and synthesized the findings by utilizing the six basic building blocks of health system strengthening (health workforce, access to equipment and essential medicines, service delivery, health information systems, leadership & governance) and other related aspects (health policy, health research, health monitoring and evaluation and disaster preparedness) in the context of COVID-19. Finally, the paper identifies priority strategies for health system strengthening in Africa.All authors who submit their paper for publication will abide by following provisions of the copyright transfer: 1. The copyright of the paper rests with the authors. And they are transferring the copyright to publish the article and used the article for indexing and storing for public use with due reference to published matter in the name of concerned authors. 2. The authors reserve all proprietary rights such as patent rights and the right to use all or part of the article in future works of their own such as lectures, press releases, and reviews of textbooks. 3. In the case of republication of the whole, part, or parts thereof, in periodicals or reprint publications by a third party, written permission must be obtained from the Managing Editor of JPRM. 4. The authors declare that the material being presented by them in this paper is their original work, and does not contain or include material taken from other copyrighted sources. Wherever such material has been included, it has been clearly indented or/and identified by quotation marks and due and proper acknowledgements given by citing the source at appropriate places. 5. The paper, the final version of which they submit, is not substantially the same as any that they had already published elsewhere. 6. They declare that they have not sent the paper or any paper substantially the same as the submitted one, for publication anywhere else. 7. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication in this journal and a link is inserted wherever published. 8. All contents, Parts, written matters, publications are under copyright act taken by JPRM. 9. Published articles will be available for use by scholars and researchers. 10. IJPRM is not responsible in any type of claim on publication in our Journal. .