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Mukudzei Chingwere in Lomé, Togo

The Covid-19 experience that befell the world with its devastating effects is a sad chapter in the history of global public health and authorities, under the ambit of the World Health Organisation (WHO), should strive to avoid the recurrence of such a calamity, Vice President Dr Constantino Chiwenga has said.

VP Chiwenga, who is also Minister of Health and Child Care, said this on arrival here ahead of his official engagements at the ongoing 72nd session of the World Health Organisation regional committee for Africa.

VP Chiwenga said it is good that global health authorities are back congregating physically again after a two-year Covid-19 induced hiatus.

As they congregate, he said, the leaders should make sure that they come up with strategies that will put the globe in a position to deal with health emergencies as the one presented by Covid-19.

With Covid-19 still lingering, albeit, under control, VP Chiwenga said health authorities need to comprehensively and decisively deal with its threat as well as one posed by other diseases and any other emergencies that may arise.

“What happened with Covid-19 was a bad surprise which we would not want a repeat of,” said VP Chiwenga.

“When the Covid-19 came, people least expected it and no one was prepared for it therefore it caught everyone by surprise and this is now what we are now trying to avoid and try to strategise and see how we, together as Africa, we can fight such diseases when they do come.

“We are having so many diseases (afflicting our people), for instance, people have forgotten that we still have HIV/AIDS because we are now only thinking of Covid-19, we are no longer thinking of other diseases. Now we have monkeypox coming up.

“We have got other diseases coming up so we have to prepare ourselves and not depend on other countries,” he said.

Meanwhile, VP Chiwenga will have a very busy schedule today with several peer review meetings lined up.

Apart from the main agenda of the meetings, the VP and his delegation are also tapping health services global best practices as they seek to revamp the country’s health sector.

The envisaged revamping, which is already underway, is calculated at making sure that the sector is in sync with the demands of an upper-middle-income economy as set out by President Mnangagwa under Vision 2030.