African nations to get 300 ventilators from Jack Ma Foundation

By Giulia Paravicini
ADDIS ABABA, April 23 (Reuters) - African nations that lack
ventilators for the treatment of COVID-19 patients will receive
some from a donation of 300 supplied by the Jack Ma Foundation,
the head of the continent's disease control body said on
Thursday.
John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), a branch of the African Union,
said last week that ten unidentified African nations were facing
the pandemic without a single ventilator.
"Those countries without ventilators will be prioritized,"
he told a news conference, adding that they will arrive in the
coming weeks.
Ma, the Chinese billionaire founder of Alibaba Group, has
donated thousands of tests kits for the new coronavirus, masks
and protective gear to all African nations.
The African Union was working to set up its own joint
procurement system, to facilitate market access for diagnostic
and medical supplies to its member states. The COVID-19 pandemic
has driven up demand for those products across the world.
"We have to recognize that we as a continent are competing
for the same resources that everybody else in the world is
competing for," Nkengasong said.
He described the testing situation across Africa as "very
disappointing."
"As of this week in a continent of 1.3 billion people, just
about 415 thousands tests have been conducted," he said, urging
governments to scale up testing to be ahead of the virus.
He said that in the coming months, the goal is to test 10
million people across the continent.
Africa's 54 countries have so far reported fewer than 26,000
confirmed cases of the disease, just a fraction of the more than
two million cases reported globally.
But the World Health Organization warned last week that
Africa could see as many as 10 million cases in three to six
months, citing its own tentative model.
The African CDC is working with governments on plans for
easing the restrictions placed to slow the virus.
Two West African countries, Burkina Faso and Ghana, eased
some coronavirus-related restrictions this week, to test the
possibility of a return to a semblance of normality after weeks
of shutdowns that have hobbled both economies.

(Editing by Duncan Miriri and Alexandra Hudson)