21 Jan 2021

The African region has called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to capacitate the continent to deal with pandemics.

This was said by Botswana’s representative in the WHO executive board, Dr Lemogang Kwape, in an interview on the sidelines of the ongoing 148th WHO virtual session, which is a precursor to the WHO assembly.

Dr Kwape, who is the Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, said capacity building on dealing with pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19 was one of the key issues for the Africa region.

 He said the continent also needed to be capacitated in research and development in the health space.

“Africa is well endowed with indigenous knowledge systems, which Africans should be able to develop. This will enable us to build intellectual property that we can sell to the world,” he stated.

Dr Kwape stressed the importance of Africa becoming part and parcel of the planning process.

In addition, he said equitable allocation of resources was critical in enabling countries to deal with pandemics.

Dr Kwape said the region was cognizant of the fact that there were some countries which could not afford to buy COVID-19 vaccines even though the pandemic weighed heavily on them.

Considering the low income or developing countries, he said, efforts would be made to distribute resources equitably within the region.

“Those must be accorded the same opportunities on the basis of the burden of the disease that they are dealing with and affordability. Those with more should help those that do not have much,” he said.

Dr Kwape noted that nobody was safe because the world was dealing with a pandemic that  was not understood, “hence we are building the ship as we sail”.

The minister explained that Botswana had been tasked by the six other African countries in the WHO executive board to present the continent’s position.

The other members are Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Ghana and Kenya. 

The meeting, which started on Monday, is expected to end January 26. Ends