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- Published on: 18 August 2020
- Published on: 18 August 2020COVID-19, NCDs and emergency care: a plea from Africa's front-lines
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the world by storm, Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMICs) not withstanding. Cabore et al modelled best estimates for peak prevalence of the virus on the African continent to be projected at more than 37 million symptomatic cases, requiring 4.6 million hospitaliations. Current estimates by Africa CDC show over 1 million cases as of August 6th, 2020, and more than 22,000 deaths [1]. South Africa has the highest prevalence with more than half a million reported cases, followed by Egypt and Nigeria, respectively. While the actual incidence and mortality rates may be evasive given limited access to testing globally [2], it is clear that the disease has not been forgiving on African soil either.
Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) constitute the backdrop for worse outcomes among those infected with COVID-19 [3], and those with poorer access to care fare worse. While NCDs have gained increasing attention in the last decade, the current pandemic illuminates the alarming gap in data on the double burden of disease that is threatened by a continued lag in focus on NCDs – an improved understanding of which would have been critical in effectively addressing our current plight.
A prime example of this is in the case of research addressing NCDs in the emergency care setting, an area of research in global health that is virtually non-existent in many resource-variable settings like Kenya, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Ea...
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None declared.