COVID-19: Morocco to send medical aid to 15 African countries at royal instructions

King Mohammed VI has ordered the shipment of medical aid to help 15 African countries in their efforts to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, the foreign ministry said.

The medical aid is made of nearly 8 million facemasks, 900,000 face shields, 600,000 hygiene caps, 60,000 protective clothing and 30,000 liters of sanitizers in addition to 75,000 packs of chloroquine and 15,000 packs of Azithromycin, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The aid will be shipped to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Eswatini, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Tanzania, Chad and Zambia, the statement said.

The medical gears and products are made in Morocco in line with World Health Organization standards and are donated as a gesture of solidarity following an initiative launched by King Mohammed VI to promote joint African action to counter Covid-19 outbreak.

The initiative aims, inter alia, to promoting the sharing of best practices in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and bolstering cooperation to mitigate the health, economic and social impacts of the pandemic.

So far, Africa has been the least infected continent but WHO warned that the virus was spreading beyond capital cities and that a lack of tests and other supplies was hampering responses.