Angola’s government believes that the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has strengthened epidemiological surveillance in all the country’s municipalities, making it possible now to detect and block outbreaks such as polio and cholera immediately.
According to Angola’s National Director of Public Health, Helga Freitas, five years on since Africa detected the first case of Covid-19, the reinforcement of epidemiological surveillance, with the training of technicians throughout the country, was one of the lessons learnt from the pandemic.
“We strengthened epidemiological surveillance by training technicians. At the moment, Angola’s municipalities have a stronger epidemiological surveillance system with teams prepared to respond to outbreaks and epidemics and we have no doubt that this was our greatest lesson learnt from Covid-19,” she said.
Speaking to Lusa, Helga Freitas pointed to the authorities’ response to the polio outbreak, recorded in 2024, and the detection of the cholera outbreak, which has been spreading across the country since last January, as a result of the reinforcement of epidemiological surveillance imposed by Covid-19.
He added that this reinforcement also includes laboratory and environmental surveillance carried out by the National Institute for Health Research. This body in 2024 detected the type 2 polio virus in an environmental sample.
“We were quickly able to mobilise funds and carry out a lockdown campaign,” she said, also highlighting the actions of the rapid response teams who, at the beginning of January, detected the first cases of cholera and are working on the ground to contain the outbreak.
“We also arranged vaccines at the international level to contain the outbreak [of cholera] and for me that was the greatest lesson learnt from strengthening the system, which was undoubtedly the strengthening of epidemiological surveillance at the national level,” she insisted.
For Helga Freitas, Covid-19 has brought another global vision of the importance of public health and an integrated response to epidemics or pandemics.
Angola, which reported the first case of local transmission of Covid-19 in April 2020, has registered an accumulated 35,854 cases, including 800 deaths, due to Covid-19, whose first case was detected in Africa (in Egypt) five years ago, on 14 February.
Angola’s National Director of Public Health, a department of the Ministry of Health, also highlighted the government’s measures to contain the pandemic for three months, which allowed the country to purchase masks and biosafety material.
“There was almost no [biosafety material] in the world and Angola managed to prepare itself during this period and in fact managed to get biosafety material and medical products from China” and prepare treatment centres, isolation centres and containment measures, he recalled.
On the other hand, he noted that no health system in the world was prepared at the time to deal with Covid-19, saying that the pandemic completely challenged the systems and strengthened the systems in their responses to epidemics, outbreaks and pandemics.
‘I think this is the great legacy that Covid-19 has left. Sadly, many people, including health professionals, have been lost, but I think that health systems have been strengthened and are better prepared to respond,” she said.
According to Helga Freitas, the Angolan authorities acted “very well” in managing the pandemic five years on, a management that would be replicated if the outbreak emerged today.
“Obviously health measures have been taken that have had an impact in economic terms – such as the State of Emergency decreed by the Angolan president – but it was a necessity and so I wouldn’t do it any differently, we would do it exactly the same,” she concluded.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 3,731,297 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 173.2 million cases of infection, according to a report by the French news agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in the centre of China.
Lusa
