Sudan’s Health Minister Akram Ali Altom has said that country urgently needs $120 million to fight the coronavirus, amid a shortage of the equipment to fight the pandemic which has spread to almost all the countries in the world, reported Reuters.
Although Sudan has reported only a few Covid-19 cases so far, 19 confirmed coronavirus a case, including two deaths, the pandemic has arrived at a time when the country is already reeling through an economic crisis.
“We are preparing a strategy to face coronavirus that extends until the end of June, but to execute it we urgently need $120 million to provide protective equipment for health-care workers and to prepare health-care facilities and advanced lab testing equipment,” Health Minister Altom told Reuters on Saturday.
Altom said Sudan is ill-equipped to tackle any mass spread of the virus.
“If it spreads, Sudan’s situation health-wise and economically means it cannot handle a large outbreak” the health minister said.
He added that the current capacity for beds with ventilators was just in the hundreds. The coronavirus outbreak is the latest epidemic to face Sudan, which has had to deal with outbreaks of cholera amid a depleted infrastructure.
Sudan began coronavirus testing of people who arrived at its international airport in February. Last month, the government closed all airports and border crossings to non-commercial traffic. The government also implemented a number of measures to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country including imposing a twelve-hour curfew, shutting down schools and universities, and banning all kinds of events and gatherings.
Altom said that his ministry has called for a complete lockdown of the capital Khartoum for three weeks, and also an increase in the number of quarantine centres and testing capacity.
Sudan’s neighbor Egypt reported 126 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, all of them Egyptians, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 206.
