Resource Flows in D R Congo Public Health and Healthcare in the COVID-19 Pandemic

John M. Janzen ()
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John M. Janzen: University of Kansas

A chapter in Africa and the Formation of the New System of International Relations—Vol. II, 2023, pp 221-235 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter examines the institutional structures and flows of resources and knowledge in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in comparison to patterns evident in the early 2000s of three types of diseases found in one region of Lower Congo: diseases vanquished, those that remained chronic, and those of increasing frequency, including COVID-19. Previous epidemics such as smallpox, measles, sleeping sickness, polio, Ebola, and HIV/AIDS offer a significant historical track record for how local/regional and international agencies and institutions worked together. The region of the author’s 2013 research hosts three of DRC’s several hundred “health zones,” a unique scheme whereby religious, state, and private institutions coordinate the primary healthcare advocated by the World Health Organization. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic reveals both the continuing operation of a network of decentralized public health institutions, as well as a resurgence of central government control over international funds, resulting in a kind of “structural dissonance” in the flows of resources and knowledge. This chapter explores the implications of this situation for the management of current and future epidemic outbreaks.

Keywords: Central Africa; COVID-19; Democratic Republic of Congo; Healthcare institutions; Public health networks; WHO (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-031-34041-3_14

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-34041-3_14

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