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A global coalition is raising money to procure and deliver badly needed personal protective equipment (PPE) to community health workers in more than 20 Sub-Saharan African countries.
Established in August, the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa) aims to raise $100 million in about a year. The fund is anchored by a $10 million commitment from Direct Relief, an international humanitarian organization, with support from Crown Family Philanthropies and in-kind contributions from more than 30 partners.
Madeleine Ballard, executive director of the Community Health Impact Coalition, a CAF-Africa partner, championed the project during a virtual forum.
“Community health workers are at the front lines, preventing, protecting and responding to this outbreak,” Ballard said.
She noted that community health workers test for malaria, administer vaccines, manage malnutrition cases, trace contacts and provide home-based care for COVID-19 patients.
“None of these services can be done over the phone, from 6 feet away or with only a homemade mask,” Ballard said. “It’s reductions in these types of services that often kill more than the pandemic itself. We saw that during Ebola, and we’re already unfortunately seeing that now, due to lack of PPE for front-line workers.”
A spike in community transmissions and a lack of PPE caused a 203% increase in COVID-19 infections among health care workers in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.
Since the pandemic began, worldwide demand for PPE — such as surgical masks, gloves and eye protection — rose to 100 times higher than normal, while prices skyrocketed up to 20 times higher.
The fund “is a valiant and essential effort to mobilize PPE to protect our front-line heroes: community health workers,” Agnes Binagwaho, vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity and former Rwandan minister of health, said on directrelief.org.
“By preventing the spread of disease across their communities while ensuring the continuum of primary care, community health workers play a central role in all epidemics, especially COVID-19,” Binagwaho said. “As such, it is essential that we, as a global community, ensure they are respected, supported and protected.”
Since its inception, CAF-Africa has funded the delivery of significant amounts of PPE to several African nations.
Between November 23 and November 30, the organization handled the donation of 16 million masks by manufacturer BYD Care to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The donation included 1 million surgical masks and 15 million masks for people to use during clinic visits, according to cafafrica.org.
On November 20, the fund delivered nearly 2.5 million pieces of PPE to Sierra Leone in collaboration with UNICEF. The nation’s Ministry of Health planned to distribute 2.2 million surgical masks, 320,000 pairs of gloves and 40,000 face shields to 13,500 community health workers.
“Community health workers are human beings. They need PPE because they need to protect themselves from contacts when they have face-to-face community interactions,” Elizabeth Musa, national coordinator of the country’s Community Health Workers program, said in a story on cafafrica.org.
Two days before the Sierra Leone donation, CAF-Africa announced the shipment of 1.5 million masks and nearly 46,000 face shields to Mozambique; 1.5 million masks, nearly 500,000 gloves and 20,300 face shields to Zimbabwe; and 18,100 face shields to Lesotho.
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