France, through AFD, commits to fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic in South East Asia
In line with the commitments made by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the French Development Agency (AFD) is mobilized to respond to the global health emergency and launched the "Covid-19 – Health in Common" initiative on 9 April 2020. In this context, an additional funding of 2 million euros in subsidy was granted on 28 April 2020 to the ECOMORE II regional project. It will finance a new component targeting support for the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic in 5 South East Asian countries.
Due to significant disparities in health systems both nationally and regionally, South East Asia is at high risk to manage Covid-19 epidemic. Although only 755 cases had been confirmed in the region during the first two months of the epidemic, a resurgence of the contagion since mid-March, with already more than 6,000 cases, suggests a major challenge for the coming weeks and months. It is therefore essential to strengthen the health infrastructures of the countries in the area.
Part of this additional funding will support directly seven laboratories in the response to the Covid-19 epidemic, and the rest of the funding will allow to buy new equipment, to purchase diagnostic kits as well as protection gears for staff, to reinforce human resources with training and capacity building, to deploy mass diagnostic strategies complementary to the current molecular reference diagnosis and to support data processing for strengthening the epidemic surveillance, in partnership with the Research Institute for Development (IRD).
In Myanmar, the National Health Laboratory (NHL) in Yangon will benefit from this support.
Other beneficiaries of this support are the following: Cambodia (the Institut Pasteur of Cambodia – designated as the COVID-19 reference laboratory designated by the WHO for the country and for the Southeast Asian region), Laos (the Institut Pasteur of Laos), Philippines (the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine), Vietnam (the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology, the Institut Pasteur of Nha Trang, and the Institute Pasteur of Ho Chi Minh).
As part of the commitments made by the President of the Republic of France, the French Development Agency (AFD) launched the "Covid-19 - Health in Common" initiative, which will mobilize 1.2 billion euros before mid-2020 - including 150 million euros in grants - in response to the Covid-19 epidemic. It will provide a targeted and coordinated response to this unprecedented crisis facing developing countries, in addition to activities supported by other donors.