Africa’s elite have to use own hospitals
When Nigeria’s all-powerful presidential chief of staff tested positive last month for the coronavirus, a doctor treating him in Lagos had to apply to a private London hospital for a copy of his medical records.
Like so many others among Africa’s ageing ruling elite, Abba Kyari and his friend, President Muhammadu Buhari, have always flown abroad for medical attention rather than risk their own chronically underfunded local hospitals.
Buhari, 77, has raised eyebrows for spending months at a time in London for treatment. Paul Biya, 87, president of Cameroon for the past 37 years, prefers the hospitals – and shopping – in Switzerland, where he has been known to spend a third of the year with Chantal, his wife.
Now, though, with their borders sealed and airports closed because of the virus, Africa’s kleptocrats are grounded like everyone else.
The irony is that, while its freetravelling ruling caste has been badly affected, Africa has, for the moment at least, appeared to lag behind the rest of the world with only 12,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 627 deaths being reported – as of Friday – despite warnings that its 1.2 billion people, many living in tightly packed slums without electricity or running water, face devastation from the disease.
David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who heads the International Rescue Committee, said on Saturday that there was a ‘‘window of opportunity over the next four weeks in Africa to prevent the spread of the disease’’.
‘‘That means basic hand washing stations that haven’t been established, it means triaging of people using tests for temperature so that you are beginning to isolate cases. It means public information campaigns, because I’m afraid that the danger of fake news is real and we know that trust is at an absolute premium in emergencies like this, and it also means constructing the most basic isolation centres so that those who do have the disease don’t contaminate everybody else.’’
That presents a dilemma for the elite. Unable to shop in London or Paris – or visit their overseas properties – they are also bereft of the expert medical care to which they are accustomed. They may be obliged to turn to the public services they have so brazenly, and for so long, neglected.
‘‘In some ways they’ve been caught in their own trap – that’s a first,’’ said Jean-Paul Bedo, a historian from Burkina Faso, where several ministers and the head of the army have Covid-19.
‘‘Had they known, they would have fixed our healthcare, knowing that what goes around comes around and that we will eventually reap what we sow,’’ mused Ikechukwu Amaechi, editor of a Nigerian news website.
Affluent Africans used to travelling abroad appeared to have been among the first victims of the virus. In Nigeria, Suleiman Achimugu, former head of the state oil company, was the first person reported to have died from it.
Four of 36 state governors and a son of a former vice-president also have the disease. It is the same story all over the continent.
An aide to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo died and various ministers are infected in Burkina Faso and Guinea, as is the army chief of Ivory Coast.
When the Cambridge-educated Kyari, widely regarded as the Nigerian president’s second-incommand, announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, it prompted panic in government circles and dozens of senior public officials went into isolation. Kyari said he had made his own care arrangements ‘‘to avoid further burdening the public health system.’’
Cynics believed he would rather stay at home than risk his life in a Nigerian hospital. ‘‘If Kyari was assured of medical attention elsewhere outside our shores, he would not be in the country today,’’ claimed Amaechi. – Sunday Times