South Korea Backs Africa's COVID-19 Battle

Oct 24 , 2020


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South Korea has provided rapid diagnostic tests, dubbed Ag-RDTs, worth close to 6.3 million dollars to the Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC) through the African Union. The Korea International Cooperation Agency and Africa CDC have signed a memorandum of understanding for a five-million-dollar COVID-19 Comprehensive Emergency Response Programme. The agreement consists of supplies of oxygen concentrators, portable ventilators, arterial blood gas analysers, and laboratory diagnostic tools such as Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (QPCR) machines along with computers, software, accessories and consumables to be used for testing. The Programme includes provisions aimed at capacity building for health workers and experts about clinical management, surveillance and risk communication. So far, the South Korean government has funneled around nine million dollars worth of assistance to Africa, including donations of masks worth two million dollars to 28 Sub-Saharan countries. It has also contributed 420,000 dollars to the African Union COVID-19 Response Fund.


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