The Sunday Mail
Special Correspondent
WHEN China and Africa resolved to tackle diseases and public health emergencies under the aegis of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) 20 years ago, no one had predicted that the world would be confronted with a precipitous disaster unseen since the end of the world wars.
The Covid-19 pandemic only surfaced in December 2019 and has killed millions of people across the globe.
This was one year after the 2018 Beijing summit of Focac.
The summit itself had laid the groundwork for health co-operation between China and Africa having undertaken the China-Africa public health co-operation plan, addressing the challenges presented by the sudden outbreak of major communicable diseases, and supporting Africa in strengthening its public health control, prevention and treatment system.
In 2018, China pledged to continue to scale up medical assistance to African countries and carry out exchange and information cooperation on public health in order to improve the latter’s health situation, strengthen its capacity for self-reliant development and build a more responsive public health system. Furthermore, China undertook to provide technical support for strengthening health-related capacities under the International Health Regulations of 2005.
China also pledged to continue to support Africa in improving its medical and health service and hospital management to provide better services to the African people as well as support exemplary cooperation between Chinese and African hospitals and the development of professional and specialised departments. Also important was the pledge by China to continue to train medical staff, public health workers and administrative personnel for African countries.
Further, under this framework, China pledged to upgrade 50 medical and health aid programmes for Africa, particularly flagship projects such as the headquarters of the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and China-Africa Friendship Hospitals. Cooperation programmes will be launched on the prevention and control of emerging and re-emerging communicable diseases, schistosomiasis, and HIV/AIDS.
China pledged to train more medical specialists for Africa and continue to send medical teams that better meet Africa’s needs as well as provide more mobile medical services for the treatment of cataract, heart disease and dental defects.
Test
In 2019 and the following year, 2020, a new unforeseen disaster struck in the form of Covid-19. The respiratory disease spread very fast from its first reported case in Wuhan, China, although it is not clear if it was the origin. The virus subsequently spread to all the world’s five continents.
Although Africa has relatively escaped the worst ravages that were feared, it nevertheless suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties.
To date, it has recorded over 8 million infections and nearly half a million deaths.
The new disease gave a formidable test on health cooperation between China and Africa originally conceived under the Focac framework – with incredible results.
As the two sides meet from tomorrow for the Focac conference, there will be significant grounds to reflect and plan how major disease outbreaks on the scale of Covid-19 could be tackled.
Already, China marshalled lots of resources in the form of protective gear, testing equipment and emergency medicines – and countries such as Zimbabwe were the first and biggest beneficiaries.
In all this, China deployed its resources, expertise and medical teams in terms of procedures and approaches laid out in Focac.
The breakthrough came when China rolled out its vaccines, and declared them public goods which it sent to the world to the tune of two billion doses as the year ends. In addition to donating US $100 million to the Covid-19 Vaccine Implementation Plan, China will donate another 100 million doses of vaccines to developing countries within the year.
As a continent with the largest number of developing countries, Africa faced even greater challenges amid this global public health emergency. While helping Africa fight the pandemic, China has also promoted China-Africa co-operation to help Africa’s development get back on track. At the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity against Covid-19 held in June last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed that China and Africa should “strengthen the Belt and Road cooperation and accelerate the follow-ups to the Focac Beijing Summit, with greater priority given to cooperation on public health, economic reopening, and people’s livelihood, so as to cushion the impact of Covid-19.”
Mindful of difficult circumstances African countries found themselves in, China signed debt suspension agreements or reached similar understanding with 19 African countries, and cancelled interest-free loans due to mature by the end of 2020 for 15 African countries, among other initiatives.
In Zimbabwe, Chinese companies were the first to upgrade a hospital and treatment centre in the capital Harare, while medical supplies came almost exclusively from China with the country being among the first to receive the vaccines made by China namely, Sinovac and Sinopharm.
In addition, China sent a medical team in May 2020 for a two-week mission to assist the country to build knowledge and capacity to fight the new disease.
To date, China has supplied tens of millions of vaccines to Africa to combat the disease while it has also provided capacity building for the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of this year, China is assisting the construction of an infectious “corona-type disease” African CDC facility.
In March this year, John Nkengasong who is the Director of Africa CDC, told Xinhua that, “We appreciate what China is doing on the continent and we call on others to join the effort.”
