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Polio eradication expertise bac Africa’s Covid-19 response
Jul 8, 2020
A network of responders from the World Health Organization (WHO) polio eradication programme and partner organizations is providing critical resources and skills to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
To boost testing in the WHO African Region, the WHO-coordinated polio laboratory network comprising 16 laboratories in 15 countries is now dedicating 50% of its capacity to Covid-19 testing.
Hundreds of tests are carried out every day using polio testing machines in Algeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.
“In Africa, no one has the footprint of neither the polio programme nor the expertise for mounting effective response campaigns. So with COVID-19 threatening to overwhelm health systems, the extensive polio response network is once again lending crucial support as countries build up systems to contain COVID-19,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa.
Contact tracing has also been a central pillar of the WHO polio programme’s support to the Covid-19 response. Mobile phone applications originally developed for health workers to use in polio outbreak response and disease surveillance have been adapted by WHO to be used against Covid-19. In Zimbabwe, for example, over 100 disease surveillance officers are using these tools for case investigations and contact tracing in many provinces where Covid-19 has been confirmed.
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