Coronavirus: China to send 24 medical experts to Burkina Faso, Ethiopia

Teams will share their ‘experience, and provide guidance and technical advice’ to the two countries, foreign ministry spokesman says

Move comes as two sides seek to ease tensions following complaints that Africans living in south China were subjected to racist abuse because of a localised coronavirus outbreak

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Concerns are growing that weak health care systems in African countries like Burkina Faso could be overwhelmed by the pandemic. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 6:21pm, 16 Apr 2020Updated: 11:10pm, 16 Apr 2020

China said it will send more medical teams to Africa to support efforts to battle the spread of the coronavirus, as the number of infections on the continent rose past 17,000 on Wednesday, with 900 deaths.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday that 12 experts, mostly from the Tianjin Municipal People’s Hospital, would travel to Burkina Faso, while a similar number from West China Hospital, Sichuan University, would go to Ethiopia.

The teams were expected to arrive in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Thursday, he said.

Burkina Faso, which has been wracked by a regional war that has seen close to 800,000 of its people displaced over the past year, has so far reported 542 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 32 deaths, while Ethiopia has reported 85 cases and three deaths.

The Chinese medical professionals would share their “anti-epidemic experience, and provide guidance and technical advice to the medical and health institutions of the two countries, and enhance their prevention and control capabilities”, Zhao said.