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Coalition launches US$100mn PPE initiative for community health workers in Africa

HSE

As part of the largest mobilisation of private resources to protect African health workers on the front lines of COVID-19, a new coalition of more than 30 members announced that it had started delivering nearly 60mn personal protective equipment (PPE) to countries in sub-Saharan Africa during the initiatives first cycle

The COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAFA) works in partnership with ministries of health to meet critical needs for PPE (including surgical masks, gloves, eye protection and more) from close to ‘one million community health workers caring for more than 400mn people, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CAFA is based on a US$10mn commitment from the NGO Direct Relief, with additional support from Crown Family Philanthropies as well as in-kind contributions from more than thirty partners. In partnership with CAFA, the World Food Programme has pledged to provide freight and logistics donations worth more than US$1mn. The Fund seeks to raise up to US$100mn to supply community health workers in 24 African countries with PPE for about a year.

According to Agnes Binagwaho, president of the University of Global Health Equity and former Minister of Health of Rwanda, said, “This is a courageous and essential effort to mobilise PPE to protect our heroes located on the front line: community health workers. By preventing the spread of the disease in their communities while ensuring the continuity of medical care, community health workers play a leading role in all epidemic situations, in particular that of COVID-19. Thus, it is essential that we, as a global community, ensure that they are respected, supported and protected.”

In response to an estimate of needs verified directly by the Ministry of Health of each country, the CAFA, in view of the initiative, has so far procured 25mn surgical masks, 35mn gloves, 822,000 screens, facial gowns and 974,000 isolation gowns, to begin with. It transports the PPE to the ports of entry of each African country, and then the local CAFA partners take care of delivering the provisions to community health workers, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.

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