Gulf states have pulled all stops in a structured manner in their attempt to combat the disease. Every GCC country had shut down schools, colleges, and universities by mid-March, followed by non-essential businesses. Individual nations tailored approaches to their specific needs, with some able to re-open shops and other essential facilities at an earlier stage than others.
Despite a recent uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities in Egypt, the country's sports minister, Ashraf Sobhi, told a press conference Monday that soccer players would be allowed to resume training June 20, and league matches would resume next month. Sports clubs are also expected to begin reopening during the next 10 days.
The relatively low number of coronavirus cases in Africa so far "have raised hopes that African countries may be spared the worst of the pandemic", in the words of the UN. But at the same time it urges caution. There is a general consensus among those in charge of health policy on the continent that testing rates are woefully low, and this could be distorting our understanding of how far the virus has spread.
The emirate is also allowing many businesses to reopen, including gyms and cinemas, provided that social distancing measures are in place at all times. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi has kept its existing 20:00 to 06:00 curfew in place, with malls, restaurants and cafes continuing to operate with restrictions on capacity.
In the face of this challenge, governments have acted fast, both to strengthen the capacity of health systems and to contain the spread of the virus: as of May 19, about half of Africa’s population lives in countries imposing some type of lockdown.
The study used random and fixed effects as well as instrumental variable estimation methods using data from 1995 to 2014. The results showed that financial development leads to increased health care expenditure. In terms of policy implications, the findings underscore the need to foster financial development in SSA economies to assist with domestic resource mobilisation to finance health care expenditure.
Investment in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) healthcare sector is booming. Over $144 billion will be ploughed into Mena-wide medical facilities by the end of 2020, with GCC nations contributing over half of the total expenditure, according to Al Masah capital.
South African pharmaceutical company Aspen says it has rights to dexamethasone – which has been labelled as an early ‘breakthrough’ drug in the treatment of Covid-19 patients. In a statement to shareholders on Wednesday (17 June), Aspen said it has noted the preliminary results of a drug trial using dexamethasone in the treatment of patients with Covid-19 requiring respiratory intervention and the related media coverage.
In January 2020, before Africa – and indeed the world – had woken up to full horror of COVID-19, four partners at McKinsey’s consultancy made the case for Africa to manufacture pharmaceuticals on a large-scale. And no, not much of what the McKinsey’s quartet was totally new to African policymakers, businesspersons and pro-health activists, who for at least two decades have heard the argument for the establishment of our own industrial scale pharma industry.
This paper sought to advance alternative health care financing for the attainment of universal health coverage (UHC) in Nigeria considering the widening inequality, dwindling government spending, and non-inclusive health insurance scheme in the country.
Investing in health care has not been a priority for the government, Gitau says, which is why the Kenyan public has been footing the bill. For the 2020/2012 budget, Kenya has allocated 111.7 billion KES (€916 million, $1 billion) out of a total budget of 2.75 trillion KES. The question is whether the coronavirus pandemic has changed any of that.
When dealing with the COVID-19 crisis many people struggle to find the best sources of information. As a contribution to the business community, Infomineo has put together a repository of the best sources of information which we will keep updating during the COVID-19 crisis.
SSA countries started easing their lockdown measures, check this Infographic to find out how the pandemic is impacting them and what are the key mitigation measures taken.
Research is ongoing a major transformation. Infomineo defined, together with industry experts, the best practices in research and conducted a survey to measure how the industry is doing.
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