Objective The COVID-19 pandemic is a biosecurity threat, and many resource-rich countries are stockpiling and/or making plans to secure supplies of vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics for their citizens. We review the products that are being investigated for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19; discuss the challenges that countries in sub-Saharan Africa may face with access to COVID-19 vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics due to the limited capacity to manufacture them in Africa; and make recommendations on actions to mitigate these challenges and ensure health security in sub-Saharan Africa during this unprecedented pandemic and future public-health crises. Main body Sub-Saharan Africa will not be self-reliant for COVID-19 vaccines when they are developed. It can, however, take advantage of existing initiatives aimed at supporting COVID-19 vaccine access to resource-limited settings such as partnership with AstraZeneca, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation, the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation, the Serum Institute of India, and the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool. Accessing effective COVID-19 therapeutics will also be a major challenge for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as production of therapeutics is frequently geared towards profitable Western markets and is ill-adapted to sub-Saharan Africa realities. The region can benefit from pooled procurement of COVID-19 therapy by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in partnership with the African Union. If the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of patients who are severely ill is found to be effective, access to the product will be minimally challenging since the region has a pool of recovered patients and human resources that can man supportive laboratories. The region also needs to drive the local development of rapid-test kits and other diagnostics for COVID-19. Conclusion Access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for COVID-19 will be a challenge for sub-Saharan Africans. This challenge should be confronted by collaborating with vaccine developers; pooled procurement of COVID-19 therapeutics; and local development of testing and diagnostic materials. The COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for sub-Saharan Africa to build vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics manufacturing capacity as one of the resources needed to address public-health crises.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) has had serious social, economic, and health effects globally. The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV- 2), which was first announced in December 2019 has resulted in more than 24 million infections. There is paucity of knowledge on the role of risk perception in the adoption of public health interventions needed to control the spread of COVID 19 infections within communities. This was a scoping review and documents how risk perception may be a major challenge for populations to adopt and implement different behavioral changes recommended to curtail the spread COVID- 19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa; and seeks to proffer solutions on how the identified challenges can be addressed drawing from lessons learnt from previous epidemics within the region. Database search of Google Scholar, PubMed, Research Gate among others were performed using related keywords to identify relevant journals and lists of primary articles. Culture, religious beliefs and poverty may influence how populations respond to infectious disease outbreaks. Risk strategies that focus only on biomedical approaches to control the COVID-19 pandemic may not mobilize the needed behavioral change. Lessons learnt from HIV and Ebola epidemics showed that involvement of communities could help transform weak adoption of public health measures when measures were framed in the relevant cultural context. An understanding of the factors influencing risk perception is needed to design appropriate risk communication strategies. Community engagement and reliance on local communication networks could promote mutual trust and increase the uptake of public-health interventions.

Health care workers in endemic settings of Nigeria have poor knowledge of and poor risk perception of BU disease. Training of health care workers is recommended to address the identified gaps to ensure earlier diagnosis and referral to specialist centres.

BackgroundPoor knowledge can influence timely care-seeking among persons with Buruli ulcer disease (BUD).ObjectivesTo assess community knowledge, attitude and stigma towards persons with BUD in endemic settings of Southern Nigeria.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional survey conducted among adult community members in four States of Southern Nigeria. A semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was administered to all participants.ResultsOf 491 adults who completed the survey, 315 (64.2%) belonged to the ≤40 years age group, 257 (52.3%) were males and 415 (84.5%) had some formal education. The overall mean (SD) knowledge score was 5.5±2.3 (maximum 10). Only 172 (35.0%) of the participants had a good knowledge of BUD. A total of 327 (66.6%) considered BUD as a very serious illness. Also, there was a high-level of stigma against BUD patients; 372 (75.8%) of the participants felt compassion for and desire to help them, 77 (15.7%) felt compassion but tended to stay away from them, and 53 (10.8%) feared them because they may infect them with the disease. Having a formal education and ethnicity were independent predictors of good knowledge of BUD.ConclusionThere is poor community knowledge of BUD in endemic settings of Southern Nigeria which influenced the attitude and perceptions of community members towards persons with BUD

BackgroundSMEs in Nigeria serve as the catalyst for employment generation, poverty reduction and economic development. Therefore studies on occupational health services in SMEs are needed to improve the occupational health and safety services in small and medium enterprises.Objective To assess and compare the occupational health and safety management systems between small and medium enterprises in Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria. MethodsThe study was conducted among 62 small and medium scale enterprises in Asaba, Delta State, selected by stratified random sampling. The design was cross-sectional analytical. A structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was developed and completed for each enterprise. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 and presented using frequency tables and charts. ResultsThe findings revealed that 22.6% and 9.7% of the SMEs had OHS policy and Joint Health and Safety Committee respectively. Furthermore, 74.2% reported they had Health and Safety Rules with only 41.3% having a written rule. None had a clinic, but 27.4% had a medical retainership which included a higher proportion of medium scale enterprise (77.8%) (p<0.001). Nine enterprises (33.9%) made up of a higher proportion of medium scale firms (100.0%) (p<0.001) conducted training on OHS. A higher proportion of medium enterprises (66.7%) conducted accident reporting and investigation (p<0.001).Conclusion There were gaps in the implementation of occupational health and safety services in majority of the enterprises with OHS-MS significantly better developed in medium enterprises. SMEDAN should ensure SMEs implement improved occupational health services, capacity building among employees on occupational health and safety management system and also, further studies on the subject matter are recommended.