Falana urges African nations to revamp health sector in wake of COVID-19 pandemic

As the world battles with reports of the COVID-19 third wave, Human Rights activist Femi Falana (SAN) has urged African countries to revamp their health sectors in order to be proactive against future disease outbreaks.

This came in the wake of the Federal Government stating that its inability to procure the required technology was responsible for the lack of COVID-19 vaccine production.

Falana stated this on Tuesday in a keynote address titled “Lesson of the pandemic for our collective Humanity”, which he delivered to the 2nd Directorate of General Studies (DGS) at the International Conference Humanism in the era of the pandemic at the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO).

African governments must exhibit proactivity since the world might not be compassionate towards attending to the health needs of the continent, Falana opined.

READ ALSO: Nigerian govt reveals reason local production of COVID-19 vaccine is yet to commence

The activist regretted that African countries such as Nigeria as a nation were producing vaccines in the 1970s but are now unable to talk of their own vaccines against coronavirus in 2021.

“It is very sad that Nigeria with a population of more than 200 million people, only about a million persons had been vaccinated,” he noted.

He further bemoaned the lack of the requisite health infrastructure in the country despite the billions garnered by the private sector Collation Against Covid (CACOVID) in 2020.

“Not enough molecular laboratories have been built. Ventilators are not inadequate supply in hospitals and isolation centres. Even with all the warnings that the pitiable situations in India, Brazil, and Turkey are presenting to the world, Nigeria is not getting prepared for the possibility of another virulent wave with massive production of medical Oxygen and other essential materials to save lives,” he lamented.

By Mayowa Oladeji

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