Africa’s fight against COVID-19 has been strengthened by a EUR10 million support package.

The funding has been granted to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by the Team Europe initiative, according to Africa CDC.

Africa CDC will use the funding to provide in-country training across 30 AU member states, prioritising those with significant community transmission. In the coming months, it plans to support training workshops as well as the deployment of 3 000 community healthcare workers, and 180 rapid responders with expertise in surveillance, laboratory and case management.

‘This pandemic is a global challenge, and it requires everybody working together with a unique level of co-operation,’ says Africa CDC director John Nkengasong. ‘We need to quickly scale up testing and contact tracing; we must deploy more healthcare workers and keep feeding the supply chain component.’

The EUR10 million funding forms part of the EUR20 billion Team Europe package, which aims to support ‘the most vulnerable countries and people most at risk, in the EU’s neighbourhood, with special emphasis on Africa, and also in the Pacific, in Latin America and the Caribbean’, according to the Team Europe website.

7 July 2020
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