Alex van den Heever on South Africa’s public healthcare response to the COVID-19 pandemic: learning from TB, SARS and MERS?

15 April 2020

Alex van der Heever

Economic Theme: Public Finance

Keyword: COVID-19, health, lockdown, pandemic, public health, South Africa

In this podcast Prof. Alex van den Heever, the Chair of Social Security at the Wits School of Governance discusses how South Africa’s public healthcare system is handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Even although the lockdown was introduced at an optimal time, inefficiencies in the testing protocols means that we could expect a hidden outbreak going forward. Not only would this put additional strain on our healthcare system but would be costly to the economy. We should learn from our efficient TB testing practices, and from those countries who learnt how to handle respiratory pandemics such as SARS and MERS, in order to become better prepared.

Economic Research Southern Africa

Alex van den Heever on South Africa’s public healthcare response to the COVID-19 pandemic: learning from TB, SARS and MERS?

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Credits:

The Ari Lennox type beat used in this production, called ‘Every night’, is royalty free and can be found at freebeats.io and the photo is by Tai’s Captures and can be found on Unsplash.