Africa must not be caught wrong-footed again. Over the past fortnight, the world has quietly but rapidly begun shutting its borders to the continent. Are we ready with a response that will shield Africa from the consequences of a potential shutdown?
When Covid hit in 2020, Africa was the last continent to get affordable testing equipment. It was last in the queue to get vaccines when those became available. It was among the last to be allowed travel and access to many other parts of the world.
Now the Bundibugyo species of the Ebola virus is spreading across the eastern area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at “a speed and scale” that has global public health experts extremely concerned.
Médecins Sans Frontières said this week that the rapid spread of the virus in the region has created a “deeply alarming” situation. Never have “so many cases” been recorded so soon after a World Health Organisation (WHO) declaration of an outbreak, the medical charity said.
The WHO declared the outbreak of Bundibugyo a public health emergency. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for this rare and fatal species of the Ebola virus. It presents as a severe viral haemorrhagic fever that destroys vital organs as the virus builds up in the body.
Two promising vaccines are being developed. Neither is ready for testing on humans yet. About 1,000 cases of the disease have been detected and more than 240 deaths have occurred since mid-May.
In response, the world is shutting its borders to Africans. Non-American citizens who have been in the DRC, South Sudan, or Uganda within the previous 21 days have been barred from entry to the US. Americans and lawful permanent residents returning from these areas are subject to enhanced public health screenings and are funnelled through designated points of entry only.
Canada and the Bahamas have also banned residents of the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan from crossing their borders. Jordan and Bahrain have done the same. Thailand, Mexico, and India have introduced stringent screening measures, cancelled conferences involving Africans and restricted entry points for Africans. Not one Ebola case has been recorded in any of these countries.
We can all see where this is headed. Very soon, it may be impossible for Africans to travel and trade with the rest of the world. This is even though the Africa CDC (Africa Centres for Disease Control & Prevention), among many others, has said that outbreaks are best controlled through localised medical support and aid rather than restrictive borders.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation says international flights are safe for now and has urged countries not to close borders or impose restrictions on travel or trade. Countries should focus on exit screening for departing passengers, rather than entry screening for arrivals, it says.
Few are listening.
For Africa, that “shut them out” mentality presents a danger that we will once again be excluded from global economic participation at a time when the continent needs to continue the small economic gains it is making.
The right time to prepare for this outbreak was 15 years ago through investment in resilient health systems, genomic surveillance and local manufacturing of medical countermeasures. But the eastern DRC has been mired in a war which has made life, let alone building a health system, a nightmare.
That means Africa now needs to move fast to contain and defeat this latest Ebola outbreak. No-one is coming to save the continent. Those days are gone. The Trump administration has, for example, been trying to send Americans exposed to the virus to a quarantine facility in Kenya or elsewhere.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his capacity as the AU champion on pandemic prevention, is leading a continental response to the outbreak. He has urged AU member states and international partners to provide funding and technical assistance.
Can this effort succeed in stemming the rapid spread of this species of Ebola? I don’t know. What is clear, though, is that we are at risk of yet another shutdown, with Africa being the main victim of its consequences. If the virus does not retreat, we are in trouble.
That should not discourage the continent, though. As Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa CDC, wrote in the Financial Times this week, “this outbreak will not be the last”. We must aim to defeat it now, but also always be prepared.
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