AFRICA & MIDDLE EAST
Preexisting Conditions
Palestinian authorities declared a public health disaster on Nov. 23. Hundreds contract Covid-19 every day but there is nowhere to treat them. The region’s infrastructure has been crumbling for years amid an Israeli economic blockade, terrorism and violence, incompetent and corrupt local leaders and political fragmentation between the Fatah movement in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“We have entered the catastrophe stage and if we continue like this, the healthcare system will collapse,” Dr. Fathi Abuwarda, a health ministry official, told Al Jazeera. “The best solution is a full lockdown for 14 days, which will allow medical teams to control and combat the virus, with only shops that provide food supplies kept open.”
The pandemic is likely to further reduce the capacity for recovery in Palestine. Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat died from the coronavirus recently, for example, the Guardian reported, robbing the Palestinian cause of an advocate who has been serving his people since the 1990s.
More than 100,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon – some have been living outside their homeland for more than 70 years – also have few resources as the virus rips through their communities, openDemocracy wrote. Covid-19 has also ravaged war-torn areas in Syria like Idlib, where an unstable ceasefire in the Syrian civil war has been in effect, noted Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
As the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the Middle East are facing challenges in dealing with the virus, it is no different in most of Africa, where healthcare systems are crumbling alongside plunging state revenues and increasingly burdensome public debt, the Washington Post explained. Displaced populations, violence, hunger and famine are, in a sense, preexisting conditions when assessing the health of the public, one might argue.
Africa has managed to blunt the scale of the pandemic, according to Voice of America. Sometimes that meant authoritarian governments could mandate mask-wearing and other measures that help stop the spread. The continent’s governments also coordinated their responses well.
Still, experts expect a second wave that will have dire consequences, the Associated Press warned. High levels of diabetes and other health ills also leave an increasing number of Africans more vulnerable to the virus, Quartz added.
Countries like South Africa, despite impressive lockdowns and other efforts, have also found it difficult to control infections because hundreds of thousands of people live in poverty in densely packed slums where social distancing is near-impossible, National Public Radio reported.
When the second wave passes, the poverty, the wars and the violence, the corruption and poor governance will still be hallmarks of many countries in the Middle East and Africa. But most people there will be worse off.
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