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Practice
COVID-19 in West Africa: regional resource mobilisation and allocation in the first year of the pandemic
  1. Césaire Ahanhanzo1,
  2. Ermel Ameswue Kpogbe Johnson2,
  3. Ejemai Amaize Eboreime3,4,
  4. Sombié Issiaka2,
  5. Ben Idrissa Traoré1,5,
  6. Clétus C Y Adohinzin5,
  7. Tosin Adesina1,
  8. Ely Noel Diallo6,
  9. Nanlop Obgureke6,
  10. Stanley Okolo6
  1. 1World Bank-funded Projects Management Unit, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso
  2. 2Public Health and Research, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso
  3. 3Department of Planning, Research and Statistics, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria
  4. 4Global Mental Health Research Group, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  5. 5Planning and Health Information, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso
  6. 6General Directorate, West African Health Organisation, Bobo-Dioulasso, Hauts-Bassins, Burkina Faso
  1. Correspondence to Dr Césaire Ahanhanzo; cahanhanzo{at}prj.wahooas.org

Abstract

The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent’s health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.

  • COVID-19
  • health policy
  • health economics

Data availability statement

All data relevant to the study are included in the article.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004762

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    Data availability statement

    All data relevant to the study are included in the article.

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Seye Abimbola

    • Twitter @CesAhanhanzo, @johnson_ermel, @ejemaim, @Tossy_ade

    • Contributors CA, EAKJ, EAE and SI conceptualised the study. BIT, CCYA and TA collected data. CA and EAE drafted the manuscript. EAKJ and SI revised the manuscript. END and NO provided major inputs. SO supervised the study. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Map disclaimer The depiction of boundaries on this map does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of BMJ (or any member of its group) concerning the legal status of any country, territory, jurisdiction or area or of its authorities. This map is provided without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.