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. 2020 Jun:95:279-281.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.04.062. Epub 2020 Apr 27.

COVID-19 and Nigeria: putting the realities in context

Chinenyenwa Ohia  1 , Adeleye S Bakarey  2 , Tauseef Ahmad  3
Affiliations

COVID-19 and Nigeria: putting the realities in context

Chinenyenwa Ohia et al. Int J Infect Dis. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was previously known as 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The disease evolved into a serious global emergency, leading to its declaration as a pandemic.

Discussion: On the African continent, Nigeria is just experiencing the direct effects of this pandemic, having recorded her index case in February 2020, with an increasing number of cases every day and a current case fatality ratio of 0.03 as at 13 April 2020. Although the recorded cases may seem low, it has been forecast that Africa will have some of the worst effects of this disease by the end of the pandemic. Generally, African countries have fragile health systems and this remains a source of concern, especially in the event of increased outbreaks. Nigeria's current national health systems cannot effectively respond to the growing needs of already infected patients requiring admission into intensive care units for acute respiratory diseases and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS COV-2) pneumonia. This has grim implications for Nigeria, especially as increased cases loom that may require critical care. Provision of quarantine or isolation facilities and availability of rapid diagnostic kits for fast and reliable testing and diagnosis of the disease can also be a challenge in Africa.

Conclusion: There is an urgent need to put into perspective these realities peculiar to Africa including Nigeria and explore available collective measures and interventions to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Africa; Collaborations; Coronavirus; Critical care; Health systems; Interventions; Nigeria.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CO was supported by the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA). CARTA is jointly led by the African Population and Health Research Center and the University of the Witwatersrand and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (Grant No--B 8606.RO2), Sida (Grant No:54100029), the DELTAS Africa Initiative (Grant No: 107768/Z/15/Z). The DELTAS Africa initiative is an independent funding scheme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS)’s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) and supported by the New Partnership for Africa's Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) with funding from the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the UK government. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the Fellow.

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