Africa COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index shows the 10 most vulnerable regions in Africa
are found in six countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, Cameroon, and Madagascar
WASHINGTON-Thursday 9 July 2020 [ AETOS Wire ]
(BUSINESS
WIRE)-- A new index designed to fill a critical information gap and
help African governments, health officials, non-governmental
organizations, and others respond to the coronavirus pandemic finds that
although Africa has not yet been overwhelmed by COVID-19, several
regions are showing troubling signs of vulnerability to the social,
economic, and health impacts of an outbreak that should not be ignored.
The
Africa COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), developed by
Surgo Foundation, was modeled after Surgo’s U.S. COVID-19 Community
Vulnerability Index, which is featured as a resource by the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. It is the first Pan-African index
to assess vulnerability to COVID-19 not just across, but within
countries.
“By
showing us the different ways African regions can be vulnerable to
COVID-19 beyond just mortality, this index gives us predictive power
we’ve never had before,” said Dr. Sema Sgaier, executive director of
Surgo Foundation. “While it does not predict which regions are at risk
of having outbreaks, it does predict whether a region in Africa is able
to mitigate the health, economic, and social impacts of COVID-19 and
what downstream consequences each region should plan for.”
The
Africa CCVI ranks 751 regions across 48 African countries in terms of
vulnerability to COVID-19 based on seven key themes: socioeconomic
status, population density, access to transportation and housing,
epidemiological factors, health system factors, fragility, and age of
population. It is the only index to measure vulnerability to COVID-19
across the African continent at a subnational level.
“The
Africa COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index fills an information gap
that has challenged the global development community for too long,” said
Magdalena Banasiak, Senior Innovation Adviser at DFID, who manages the
COVIDAction programme, which co-funded the index. “Until now, limited
COVID-19 data in Africa has not provided a true reflection of where this
pandemic could have the greatest impact--partly due to low scale-up of
testing, and partly due to incomplete reporting. Now we can better
understand and prioritise pandemic response efforts not just across, but
within African countries.”
Key Findings
1) Africa’s relatively young population is so far proving to be its best defense against COVID-19 deaths.
Regions
with low age-related vulnerability--Nairobi, Mandera, and Kajiado in
Kenya, or Lusaka in Zambia--will fare better in terms of COVID-19
hospitalizations, people needing critical care, and fatality rates.
Limited
health systems in poor African countries like Mozambique and Mali are
in part offset by their younger populations, which have several times
lower projected hospitalization rates compared to rich countries like
South Africa and Egypt. These wealthier countries in North and South
Africa have older populations, which are far more vulnerable to
hospitalizations and poor COVID-19 outcomes.
Projected
infection fatality rate (IFR) based on the age and gender distribution
in the continent is relatively low in most regions of Africa--between
0.10% and 0.15%. This is four times lower than in the US, where a
greater proportion of the population is old (fatality rate of 0.66%).
2) Vulnerability to COVID-19 is not distributed evenly across the continent, with drivers of vulnerability varying by region.
The
Top 10 most vulnerable regions across Africa are found across six
countries: Democratic Republic of Congo (with four of the most
vulnerable regions), Malawi (with two of the most vulnerable regions),
Ethiopia, Uganda, Cameroon, and Madagascar.
Some
countries have similar levels of vulnerability, but for different
reasons. For example, in South Africa there is widespread vulnerability
due to epidemiological risk factors and fragility, but the primary
driver of vulnerability in Chad is socioeconomic factors, while the
primary driver of vulnerability in Cameroon is fragility.
There
are many regions with similar levels of vulnerability within a country,
like Sahel and Sud-Ouest in Burkina Faso, where different underlying
reasons account for that vulnerability. Sahel’s vulnerability derives
from its position as the epicenter of humanitarian violence in the
country, while Sud-Ouest contains the greatest percentage of Burkina
Faso’s elderly population.
3) Many kinds of vulnerability co-exist within regions, and seem to be correlated to some extent:
Many
regions that experience vulnerability due to socioeconomic factors are
also experiencing vulnerability due to the strength of their health
systems and the quality of their housing. This is the case in the
Somalia region of Ethiopia, Tahoua region of Niger, and Manyara region
of Tanzania.
Regions
with high socioeconomic vulnerability tend to have low vulnerability in
terms of population density and epidemiological factors, as is the case
with the Thaba-Tseka region of Lesotho or the Alibori region of Benin.
High
epidemiological vulnerability tends to mean low vulnerability due to
age, as is the case in the Abidjan region of Côte d'Ivoire or the
Lilongwe region of Malawi, where many people die before reaching old
age.
4)
Mobility has by and large decreased across the continent over the last
few months, but the most vulnerable areas are the least likely to
practice social distancing.
Across
16 countries in Africa with available mobility data, there was an
overall reduction in mobility of ~12.2% since mid-February relative to
pre-COVID-19 movement, which is encouraging for virus control.
People
in more vulnerable regions such as Yobe, Zamfara, and Bauchi, Nigeria
have not been social distancing as much as their counterparts in less
vulnerable regions such as Lagos, Federal Capital Territory, and Osun,
Nigeria--which increases their probability for infection and compounds
those regions’ challenges in fending off the virus.
On
average, the more vulnerable a region is due to health system factors,
the less social distancing they are doing (even though poor health
systems especially need a “flattening of the curve” through social
distancing). This is the case in regions like Al Wadi al Jadid, Egypt,
Kavango, Namibia, and Mara, Tanzania.
On
average, the more vulnerable an area is due to population density and
epidemiological factors, the more social distancing they are doing--as
is the case in regions like Dakar, Senegal and Western Cape, South
Africa.
To explore the index and learn more, visit precisionforcovid.org/africa.
The
Africa CCVI is made possible in part through support by the
#COVIDAction Data Challenge, via an award from the UKAID Department for
International Development (DFID)’s Frontier Technologies Hub.
Technical Notes:
Countries
excluded due to lack of data: Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Mayotte (France), Réunion (France), São Tomé
and Príncipe, Seychelles, and Western Sahara.
Data
Sources: Demographic and Health (DHS) Surveys, Institutes of Health
Metric and Evaluation (IHME), Malaria Atlas Project, Uppsala Conflict
Data Program, UNHCR, World Bank, Open data for Africa, Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), Armed Conflict Location & Event
Data Project (ACLED), Global Roads Inventory Project, World Pop, and
Global Data Lab. Mobility data are from Google. Fatality and
hospitalization rates are from Salje et al. (2020) in Science and kindly
provided by Dr Mumtaz and Prof. Raddad.
About Surgo Foundation
Surgo
Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to solving health and social problems with precision. We do
this by bringing together all the tools available from behavioral
science, data science, and artificial intelligence to unlock solutions
that will improve and save lives. We work in the United States and in
low-income countries on issues like COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis,
maternal mortality, health care, housing, and more. Visit us at
surgofoundation.org.
About COVIDaction
COVIDaction
is a partnership between DFID’s Frontier Technology Hub, Global
Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub), and UCL’s Institute of Healthcare
Engineering along with other collaborators, designed to explore these
questions. The partnership is working with a range of partners to build a
technology and innovation pipeline to support action related to the
COVID-19 pandemic across key thematic areas. Together we plan to scan
the globe for promising ideas, evaluate and make sense of what we find,
support the very best ideas with grant funding and venture support and
share what we learn along the way. The partnership seeks to support
ideas across data, local production and solutions, and resilient health
systems. Find out more at medium.com/covidaction.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200708005942/en/
Contacts
Bethany Hardy, +1-202-277-3848, bethanyhardy@surgofoundation.org
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