Health facilities in Ethiopia need 130m facemasks for next four months

Addis Ababa, June 2, 2020 (FBC) -Minister of Health Dr Lia Tadesse said health facilities across the country will need 130 million medical facemasks for the next four months.

In a press conference issued today, Dr Lia said that more attention has been attached to fulfil inputs that help prevent the spread of the virus.

The number of facemasks available in the country at the start of the outbreak was only 4 million, she recalled.

However, following the efforts made after the outbreak, more than 7 million facemasks were distributed to health facilities, according to her.

Health facilities across the nation still need 130 million more facemasks for the coming four months alone, the Minister stated.

In addition to importing medical supplies and receiving donations from various sources, joint efforts are underway with relevant ministerial offices to manufacture facemasks locally with the required standards of quality.

She further said country has now made available 221 ventilators as well as distributed more than 3, 600 oxygen cylinders across the country to fight the pandemic.

Dr Lia further said broad efforts are underway to scale up testing capacity following the significant increase in the spread of the virus across the country, especial in the past three weeks.

Join our telegram channel https://t.me/fbcenglish to get latest news updates.