Coronavirus Will Hit Nigeria’s Economy Hard – WHO

The coronavirus outbreak will drag Nigeria and most of sub-Saharan Africa into a recession, The World Health Organization,WHO, has said.

WHO revealed that the most recent forecast for the region, sub-Saharan Africa’s economy will contract 2.1% to 5.1% from growth of 2.4% in 2019.

According to the organization, the coronavirus will cost sub-Saharan Africa $37 billion to $79 billion in output losses in 2020 because of trade and value chain disruption, among other factors.

WHO added that the deadly virus is currently testing the limits of societies and economies across the world, and African countries are likely to be hit particularly hard.

World Bank Vice President for Africa, Hafez Ghanem, said, “The Covid-19 pandemic is testing the limits of societies and economies across the world, and African countries are likely to be hit particularly hard,”

“Food imports would decline substantially (as much as 25% or as little as 13%) due to a combination of higher transaction costs and reduced domestic demand,”

Cesar Calderon, the World Bank’s lead economist and lead author of the report added, “here will be need for some sort of debt relief from bilateral creditors to secure the resources urgently needed to fight Covid-19 and to help manage or maintain macroeconomic stability in the region.”

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The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group. Its predecessor, the Health Organization, was an agency of the League of Nations.

The WHO constitution has been signed by 61 countries (all 51 member countries and 10 others) on 22 July 1946, with the first meeting of the World Health Assembly finishing on 24 July 1948. It incorporated the Office International d’Hygiène Publique and the League of Nations Health Organization. Since its establishment, it has played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases such as sexual and reproductive health, development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

The WHO is responsible for the World Health Report, the worldwide World Health Survey, and World Health Day. The current Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom, also served as Ethiopian Health Minister from 2005 to 2012 and as Ethiopian Foreign Minister from 2012 to 2016. Adhanom started his five-year term on 1 July 2017.