Day: June 21, 2021

Freetown, 21 June 2021 – While the 2014–2016 deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa devastated lives and wrecked health services, it also offered pivotal lessons in outbreak control by stoking swift and more effective response as well as driving progress in vaccines and therapeutics.

When the virus re-erupted in Guinea in mid-February 2021, neighbouring countries were quick to ramp up readiness to tackle potential cross-border infection. The outbreak in Guinea which re-emerged in the same region as the 2014–2016 outbreak, was declared over on 19 June.

In support of countries neighbouring Guinea, the World Health Organization (WHO) swiftly undertook a risk assessment and rated the risk of spread in the region as high. WHO further helped governments institute actions immediately to prevent spill-over of the disease.

In readiness for a potential cross-border infection, Guinea’s six neighbours stepped up enhanced surveillance and screening at border crossing points and robust community engagement. Rapid response teams were deployed to border areas to strengthen districts’ readiness using pillar approach. Capacities for testing and treatment facilities were scaled up as well as working with communities to take full ownership and rally around public health responses.

In Sierra Leone, the health authorities rolled out preventive Ebola vaccination as a priority action of its Ebola Outbreak Preparedness and Contingency Plan. The vaccination targeted 16 000 people at high risk such as frontline health workers and communities in border areas.

“Apart from other critical public health measures for preventing EVD infection, the Ebola vaccine is a powerful public health tool at our disposal that can protect the health care workers and other frontline service providers who are at high risk of exposure,” says Dr Charles Njuguna, Health Security and Emergencies lead at WHO in Sierra Leone.

In addition to health workers, traditional healers, taxi motorbike riders were among the high-risk population groups being targeted in the vaccination for which the doses were mobilized by WHO.

“I am a health worker and every day at work we interact with people from different backgrounds and localities even before fully knowing their disease conditions,” says Salome Kanjama, who received the Ebola vaccination. “It helped boost my confidence and safety against the disease even as we offer services to others. There are families in Sierra Leone that spend the day in Guinea and return in the evening and vice versa.”

The latest outbreak in Guinea was contained within the country, where 23 cases, 11 survivors and 12 deaths were reported. Guinean authorities, with the help of WHO and partner organizations, promptly launched response, with vaccinations starting just nine days into the outbreak.

“The government has been impressively proactive and determined in mobilizing partners support in building structures and capacities for prevention, preparedness and readiness for any potential outbreak, and that includes deployment of the vaccine on compassionate grounds,” says Dr Steven Velabo Shongwe, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone.

“Even though the outbreak is now over in Guinea, we continue to support the health authorities in the sub-region through cross-border collaboration and partnerships to sustain enhanced public health surveillance for early detection of any resurgence of Ebola as well as continue with the EVD vaccination exercise in Sierra Leone” Dr Shongwe added.

Source: World Health Organization

South Africa to participate in the 8th edition of the Continental Africa Public Service Day Celebration in Zimbabwe

Public Service and Administration Minister, Mr Senzo Mchunu, will lead the South African delegation at the 8th annual Africa Public Service Day (APSD) conference to be held in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 21 to 23 June 2021. During the three – day conference, the Minister will share on amongst others, the country’s state of public service, development and governance practices.

This year’s APSD celebrations will be held at the Victoria Falls Conference Centre in Harare under the theme: “Building the Africa We Want through embracing an ethical culture that underpins purpose driven leadership in the context of a crisis”.

The conference will see Ministers of some of the 55 African Union Member States responsible for Labour, Public and Civil Service, in their respective countries, converging to discuss the state of public service on the continent, governance issues, best practices and innovative ways on how to improve the effectiveness of the public service, amidst the COVID- 19 pandemic.

Discussions at the 3 – day conference will be phased along the following sub- themes:

• Celebrating the contribution of the public servant: a story of courage and resilience in the management of the COVID-19 Pandemic;

• Embracing Cultural diversity as a lever to strengthen institutions for a responsive and ethical public administration;

• Deploying technology to sustain and enhance service delivery in the face of this challenging COVID-19 pandemic climate;

• Achieve inclusivity through harnessing Arts and culture, as instruments to inform markets and build demand side capacity for effective and efficient service delivery.

The APSD programme is also being observed in various countries as a week-long programme from 21- 25 June 2021, consisting of various activities, with the 3 day continental celebration being the kick-off event.

Locally, a programme comprising of a series of webinars will commence on 23 June, with a ‘Dialogue on Youth Development in the Public Service’, which will be preceded by a virtual showcasing and sharing of public service innovations, unearthed in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This will be followed by a ‘Dialogue on Frontline Service Delivery Monitoring’, a webinar which seeks to create a platform for engagement, focusing on addressing the role of the public service and participatory governance and development of an efficient and effective developmental state.

The last event of the week will be a Master Class Webinar to be hosted by the National School of Government (NSG), where African public servants will be afforded an opportunity to critically reflect on their work and present urgent steps required to improve the effectiveness of the public service. Information on these events will be shared on the social media pages of the DPSA as well as the NSG.

Source: Government of South Africa

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The latest economic analysis for the country says the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts disrupted livelihoods, expanding the number of extremely poor citizens by 1.3 million, and increasing extreme poverty overall to 49% in 2020

• The pandemic further disrupted provision of basic public services in health, education and social protection, which were strained prior to the pandemic, affecting poor citizens the most

• Absent action, the report warns that there is a risk of reversing some of Zimbabwe’s previous progress on human capital development

HARARE, June 10, 2021—The number of extremely poor citizens rose to 7.9 million in 2020 due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its impacts, according to the World Bank’s latest economic analysis for the country.

The Zimbabwe Economic Update, Overcoming Economic Challenges, Natural Disasters, and the Pandemic: Social and Economic Impacts, cites surveys conducted in 2020 which show nearly 500,000 Zimbabwean households have at least one member who lost her or his job, causing many households to fall into poverty, and worsening the plight of the existing poor. Food insecurity was also exacerbated by inadequate reach/coverage of relevant social protection programs—less than a quarter of the increased number of extreme poor households received food aid in June 2020, and this share dropped to 3% of rural households in September 2020.

The pandemic also put pressure on strained public resources, the report notes, exacerbating implementation challenges, severely affecting service delivery in health, education and social protection. For example, as schools across the country closed in response to the lockdown measures, access to remote learning was limited in rural areas, especially for poor households. Only 9% of school-going children in rural areas were reported as having used mobile applications for learning during pandemic-related school closures, compared with 40% for urban children.

In addition, the report says supply-side challenges facing the health system—following a prolonged period of doctor strikes, reduced working hours for nurses, and limited and slow access to personal protective equipment—initially contributed to a decline in the coverage and quality of essential health services. The number of institutional maternal deaths increased by 29% in 2020 compared to 2018, while deliveries at home increased by 30%. Household loss of access to basic social services and deepening of negative coping strategies risk undermining Zimbabwe’s relatively high human capital and the pace and inclusivity of economic growth, according to the report. The economic challenges and extraordinary shocks caused by the pandemic, and the drought and cyclone in 2019provide opportunities to press forward with bold measures to protect lives and livelihoods, and support Zimbabwe’s longer-term recovery, according to the analysis.

“Preserving lives during this unprecedented pandemic in this challenging economic environment will require a strategic approach to addressing underlying problems in the health sector,” said Stella Ilieva, World Bank Senior Economist and lead author of the economic update. “Such a strategy needs to recognize and simultaneously attend to the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 health burden in coordinating and allocating sector resources.”

As concerns regarding a possible third wave are mooted, the report notes ongoing efforts to ramp up capacity. In the short-term, priority interventions include: i) ensuring adequate access to the 2021 budget allocation for the COVID-19 response as well as to restore access to essential health services; and ii) improving the procurement, distribution, and management of pharmaceutical commodities and equipment in hospitals and clinics. Ensuring the sustainability of health financing in the medium-term will require identification of sustainable ways to address the remuneration and retention of health workers; as well as strengthening accountability frameworks and investing in appropriate monitoring and information management systems.

Protecting livelihoods will require strengthening social protection and food security while also ensuring better education outcomes, according to the report, as insufficient financial resources and implementation capacity constrain the government’s ability to reach the growing number of people in extreme poverty. Though humanitarian food aid programs can help households address short-term food insecurity, the report notes Zimbabwe is working towards longer-term solutions, such as climate-proofing agriculture, better managing grain reserves, and increasing rural communities’ linkages to markets. To forestall a looming learning crisis, the government has taken steps to expand opportunities for distance learning, which the report recommends be scaled up, along with measures to provide additional financing for schools in poor areas, increased coverage of social assistance for school fees, and adequate school feeding programs.

Additional report observations and recommendations include:

Domestic policies which support price stability and the optimal use of public resources are key, especially given large financing needs to prevent a deterioration in human capital.

Reallocate spending from inefficient, distortive subsidies to targeted measures that limit the toll of the pandemic, provide social safety nets and food security, and prevent a learning crisis that risks undercutting long-term growth and productivity

Adopted policies should take into account the country’s limited fiscal space and the significant financing required to arrest further deterioration of social service delivery

As it is currently facing tight public finances and limited recourse to external financing, Zimbabwe will need to rely heavily on reallocating domestic resources to optimal public uses, mobilize humanitarian support to prevent increasing fragility and leverage private financing where possible to stimulate growth

Significant financing will be required to restore service delivery to the levels of the recent past as the gap has widened sharply over the past two years. In this regard, new approaches to working with the private sector and development partners are needed to leverage financing and skills. Such approaches, coupled with a more responsive and accountable public sector, would enable a more rapid improvement in service delivery.

Source: World Bank

President Cyril Ramaphosa will this afternoon, 21 June 2021, together with the President of the French Republic, His Excellency Emmanuel Macron and World Health Organisation Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, participate in a joint media briefing on COVID-19 vaccines.

The briefing will focus on the establishment of the first messenger RNA technology transfer hub for COVID-19 vaccines, located in South Africa

The media briefing will be livestreamed on all PresidencyZA and WHO digital platforms as follows:

Date: Monday, 21 June 2021

Time: 17h00

Source: Government of South Africa

The B-BBEE Commission will be hosting a virtual Youth dialogue under the theme “Promoting economic inclusion and youth employment”. The dialogue arises out of the need to debate issues that the becoming a barrier to transformation, inclusion and employment for young people.

The dialogue follows the recent release of statistics (by Statistics South Africa) on the high level of youth unemployment in South Africa, which points out a major concern. The debate will be structured around the pillars of Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment, which include Ownership and Management control, Skills Development for youth, Enterprise Development.

The intention is to provide a platform for the youth to voice out their lived realities, challenges associated with inclusion into the economy through B-BBEE pillars and in turn explore the means for increasing employment. The panellists of the virtual dialogue will consists of Youth Leaders from the Black Management Forum, Black Forum South Africa (Youth Chapter), Black Business Council (Youth Desk).

Source: Government of South Africa