10 African Countries Have No Ventilators. That's Only Part of the Problem.

In all, fewer than 2,000 working ventilators have to serve hundreds of millions of people in public hospitals across 41 African countries, the World Health Organization says, compared with more than 170,000 in the United States.

Ten countries in Africa have none at all.

Glaring disparities like these are just part of the reason people across Africa are steeling themselves for the coronavirus, fearful of outbreaks that could be catastrophic in countries with struggling health systems.

The gaps are so entrenched that many experts are worried about chronic shortages of much more basic supplies needed to slow the spread of the disease and treat the sick on the continent — things like masks, oxygen and, even more fundamentally, soap and water.

Clean running water and soap are in such short supply that only 15% of sub-Saharan Africans had access to basic hand-washing facilities in 2015, according to the United Nations. In Liberia, it is even worse — 97% of homes did not have clean water and soap in 2017, the U.N. says.

“The things that people need are simple things,” said Kalipso Chalkidou, the director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, a research group. “Not high-tech things.”

The prospect of a devastating pandemic has led many African governments to take serious measures. Some imposed curfews and travel restrictions when only a few dozen cases in their countries had been confirmed.

And before officials knew of any confirmed cases, airports in Niger and Mali were taking passengers’ temperatures and contact information in case they needed to be traced. Every morning in Senegal, the health minister gives a live update on Facebook.

The crisis has shown that Africa needs to be self-reliant, said Amy Niang, a lecturer in international relations at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.

“The brutal withdrawal of the U.S. of its contributions to the WHO, and the management of the crisis more globally, is a stark reminder that Africa’s faith in multilateralism has become untenable,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .