Friday June 19, 2020
Workers offload the medical supplies donated by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 22, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Shoubao)
Addis Ababa, (Prensa Latina) Ethiopia donated on Thursday 15 tons of medical supplies worth half a million dollars to the authorities in Somalia, to aid that East African country to cope with the Covid-19 impact.
'The donation reflects the nature of our foreign policy, focused on promoting solidarity with neighbors in good and bad times,' stated the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Redwan Hussien during a delivery ceremony held in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
Somalia, a country with approximately 0.34 essential healthcare workers per each 1,000 inhabitants, registers until Thursday over 2,700 Covid-19 cases and 88 deaths from the disease.
According to an official press release spread here, following the protocol, Hussien and Ethiopia's Finance Minister Ahmed Shide held a meeting with Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, in which they discussed issues related to multi-faceted bilateral collaboration.
In addition, the press release reports that the government has also delivered equipment and medicines to South Sudan, where violence hampers the fight against the pandemic and the coronavirus is rapidly spreading.
The first Covid-19 case in that nation was confirmed on April 5, and there are now over 1,830 infected, 117 recoveries and 32 deaths, amid concerns over the rise in local transmission of the fatal disease.