You can’t fight pandemics without power—electric power

Last week’s U.N.-sponsored report on tracking Sustainable Development Goal 7 brought some good news. The number of people without access to electricity has fallen from 1.2 billion in 2010 to 789 million in 2018. But the report also noted that many public facilities still lack access. The most recent cross-country data on electricity access in health facilities suggests that 25 percent of health clinics in six surveyed countries (Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Niger) lack any electricity access at all—virtually the same ratio reported in a similarly comprehensive cross-country survey nearly 10 years ago. Furthermore, only 28 percent of clinics and hospitals report having reliable electricity.

Reliable power is critical for effective responses to COVID-19 and other diseases. Virtually all diagnostic tests for active COVID-19 infection currently require electricity. Patients who need further diagnosis (e.g., pulse oximetry) or treatment with ventilators or oxygen masks have to be placed in clinics with reliable power; outages for even a few minutes can be life-threatening. Besides, electricity powers sanitization and cleaning equipment like autoclaves and air filtration and, in some places, pumped clean water. These are necessary for preventing the spread of infection among patients and medical workers.

Some African countries have demonstrated remarkably successful responses to COVID-19, leveraging institutions and assets built during previous polio and Ebola outbreaks. Still, improving power reliability to health facilities should be a big part of the short-term policy response to COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the longer term, better access to reliable and sustainable electricity at health facilities is central to programs for increasing health system resiliency and quickening economic recovery.