News & Analysis: Guinea-Bissau
“As lockdowns, curfews and transport disruptions prevent many vulnerable people from getting healthcare, communities are stepping into the breach. Community health workers and volunteers are ensuring their peers, friends, and neighbours are protected from disease.”
“This year, the coronavirus pandemic has forced governments to grapple with difficult questions regarding lockdowns, contact tracing and the provision of emergency financial assistance to citizens now without work. In developing countries, these hardships are magnified with the World Bank estimating that remittances – money transfers sent from foreign workers to their home countries – to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are projected to fall by 19.7 percent (from $554 billion in 2019 to $445 billion in 2020). Considering the significant role that remittances play in alleviating poverty and improving nutrition, many governments have turned to mobile cash transfers for vulnerable citizens to use while minimising COVID-19 exposure.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has tightened its grip on much of Africa, where reported cases have more than tripled over the last month, jeopardizing overstretched medical teams as the need for care soars.”
“For new producers in the pandemic era, some licensing rounds are likely to be cancelled, and production is being pushed back once more. Debt is becoming an even greater issue. Yet some investors—like Total in Uganda—still show signs of interest.”
“With a rise in populism and associated patterns of scapegoating, response to any crisis in the United States tends to default towards denial, deflection, blame-shifting, and foot-dragging, rather than the proactive, collective response necessary for resilience that is so much more evident in West Africa. Governments in much of the region have responded swiftly and urgently to curb COVID-19, with the memory of the Ebola outbreak still strong.”
“As COVID-19 races its way across Africa, there are two stories happening at once. The first is of governments using their armies and militarized police to beat, threaten, and shoot their way to public health…The second is of communities knitting together their meager resources to fill the gap of failed services and absent states.”
“Many are replacing lockdowns with curfews and mandatory facemasks in public spaces alongside the basic social distancing measures, while pushing up domestic production by local textiles and apparel factories to repurpose as well as small-scale tailors to meet demand for masks.”
“Guinea-Bissau’s Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam has tested positive for the novel coronavirus alongside three members of his cabinet, the health ministry said on Wednesday. Nabiam, Interior Minister Botche Cande and two other ministers were diagnosed on Tuesday and have been quarantined at a hotel in the capital Bissau.”
“ECOWAS Heads of States, including president Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone who is currently on a 14 days self-isolation for covid-19, yesterday held an Extraordinary Summit Meeting via video conferencing to discuss how to combat the exponential spread of the virus across the region, with over 6,000 people now confirmed to have contracted the virus in West Africa.”
“But cautious optimism should be the watchword – some experts claim that the disease is secretly coiling its way through African societies and that when it raises itself to its full dreadful height, a nightmare could ensue.”
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