Dr. Umaru's Blog on Health & Development

 Good morning to my esteemed readers and hope you are staying safe and following your local public health guidelines. Today, I reflect on the challenges and success of 2020 as seen from the global health perspective. You may be surprised to see my title of "global health success" in a year of pandemic, but, read on to see my perspective. It is no doubt 2020 will go down as one of the global health challenging years in recent centuries. The most important occurrence of the year is the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 is a disease caused by one of the families of coronaviruses called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-coronavirus-2 or SARS-Cov-2 virus, which when infected, causes severe respiratory disorder (first reported in 2019), hence the name COVID-19.  The virus was first "discovered" in Ruhan Province of China allegedly from human-animal interaction in the city's animal market. Now, whereas coronaviruses are not new, there are mostly present in animals inclu...

    There's been multiple interventions and strategies aimed at helping Africa's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The multitude of support and coordination between Africa's leadership, under the Africa U nion Commission, and the global stakeholders including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Jack Ma Foundation among others have been positively commended.  As of August 7, 2020, the continent reported the fist one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 bringing to light the increasing exposure to the diseases by the continent's vulnerable population.  Whereas the one million cases represent an important measure in Africa's response to the pandemic, it is by far less significant comp ared to similar numbers in developed countries, such as the United Sta tes of America.  There are those who are of the opinion that Africa's response is too slow because the number of cases coming out of the continent is far less than expect ed (or predicted...