The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: An urgent need to relook at the training of the African health workforce

摘要

To the Editor: As of 11 March 2020, the severe acute respiratorysyndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic had infectedover 120?000 people in more than 90 countries, of whom 4 369 haddied.[1] As recent modelling analysis highlights, the evolving impactof SARS-CoV-2 will be as a large outbreak in sub-Saharan Africa(SSA) that may rapidly overwhelm existing health services.[2] To avoidthe worst of outcomes, African health systems must act quickly anddecisively. Investing in health professions education will be essentialto both containing and managing the pandemic and any other newinfections in the future. Here we describe how a transnational HIVtraining project, implemented by the African Forum for Research andEducation in Health (AFREhealth)[3] and the University of California,San Francisco (UCSF), offers a template for how we can deployAfrican-bred approaches to address this emerging threat.