VIENNA, 2 December 2020 – While Africa has been spared the worst health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continent’s 1.2 billion people are still at high risk.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have designed a programme to improve the ability of countries in Africa to protect their healthcare, industrial and other workers by reducing the risk of exposure to and transmission of COVID-19.

The Government of Germany, represented by Gerhard Küntzle, Permanent Representative of Germany to UNIDO, today met with the UNIDO Director General, LI Yong, to sign a funding arrangement to support this joint UNIDO-WHO programme. Germany will finance an enabling kick-off project with €1 million.

The kick-off project will include actions to set-up the best programme governance, to identify the needed partnerships, to define main strategies and to pilot approaches and tools. These interventions will contribute to the overall programme development objective of improving the supply of quality-assured, locally manufactured personal protective equipment (PPE), hand sanitizer and disinfectants to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission in Africa and improve the response capacity of national health care systems on the continent.

For more information, contact:

Riccardo Savigliano, Chief of the Agro-Industries and Skills Development Division, UNIDO

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Kai Bethke, Director of the Department of External Relations, UNIDO

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