The World Health Organisation has warned that African health systems would be ill-equipped to respond to the rapid COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak should cases start to proliferate on the continent, even as it pledged to support African countries on joint preparedness and response strategy.

The Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom,  who stated this weekend during the meeting of African Health Ministers Emergency Meeting on the Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, convened by the African Union Commission at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, spoke of the virus’s increasing global spread and the need for Africa to prepare for possible cases.

“Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for COVID-19 to spread in countries with weaker health systems. We have to take advantage of the window of opportunity we have, to attack the virus outbreak with a sense of urgency,” Tedros who spoke by video from Geneva, noted.

“If COVID-19 starts to spread on the continent, African health systems will struggle to treat patients suffering from symptoms such as respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.

“These patients require intensive care using equipment such as respiratory support machines that are, as you know, in short supply in many African countries and that’s a cause for concern,” Tedros said.

There has been one confirmed case in Africa so far, but health officials have warned that the spread could be deadly in countries with already-strained health systems.

There have been more than 200 suspected cases in the WHO’s AFRO region, though nearly all have been confirmed negative. WHO conducted a survey with countries to assess their overall readiness for COVID-19 and found the regional readiness level was an estimated 66 percent.