Fighting Pandemic and Strengthening Health Care in East Africa

The EU-IGAD COVID-19 Response Programme, funded by the European Union with 60 million Euros, successfully contributed to seven countries of the IGAD region during the pandemic and brought significant benefits to their health care systems. The regional response was managed by UNOPS and implemented by IGAD, GIZ, IOM, TradeMark East Africa, UNICEF and UNOPS.

The programme delivered 460 activities in 55 locations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda from June 2020 until December 2023. This included delivering critical medical supplies and equipment for COVID-19 while implementing a comprehensive programme to enhance IGAD's capacity to coordinate national responses, increase access to health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, mitigating gender-based violence, improving community engagement, ensuring borders and critical supply chains are safe for trade and promoting digital solutions to monitor the pandemic. In the end, the programme reached 6,822,433 people through different activities, surpassing its target by 52.7%. 

“It has been very difficult for us over the past decade to live without easy access to safe drinking water. I am happy with the realization of this project, because we have water with a tap,” Khadija Mohamed Ali, the resident of Balho region in Djibouti says. 

The project evolved from an emergency response project in 2020 to include development activities as the project progressed and the COVID-19 emergency subsided. The need for this important nexus required a shift towards a multidisciplinary approach in interventions and implementation to account for the complexities of the social and health thematic areas and their interrelations with different sectors. 

“We have received a lot of supplies, including some of the medication. With this response, we tried to manage the whole treatment center, as well as the isolation center,” Obang Obuya, medical doctor of Gambella General Hospital in Ethiopia says. 

The vital support of the programme was procurement and delivery of 8.6 million pieces of personal protective equipment, 208,977 COVID-19 test kits, 64,724 WASH and hygiene kits, 22 ambulances, 14 PCR machines, eight field vehicles and seven mobile laboratory trucks, among others. 

“We received a brand new vehicle which allowed us to do the activity of the mobile team and therefore we visited localities that we have never visited before - Moussa Ali and Diro,” Dr. Abdoulkader Mohamed Ali, the chief physician of the Obock region in Djibouti, says. 

The Programme also focused on the infrastructure aspect of health systems, so seven facilities were constructed or rehabilitated in Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, mainly in the cross-border areas, thus enabling care for the most vulnerable population.