Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame sacked his health minister for reportedly lying over the availability of coronavirus testing kits.
Kagame said the sacked minister Diane Gashumba and other government appointees had lied to him about the virus and Rwanda’s readiness to fight the outbreak.
He warned his appointees against lying, carelessness and indiscipline while addressing them at a retreat.
Kagame revealed that “One morning, I called one of the leaders and the Prime Minister about the Coronavirus and asked that they examine each one of us ahead of the Leader’s Retreat. I told them to tell the minister of health to ensure this.’‘
“She responded that we have 3,500 kits, and that using 400 of them to test leaders would seriously deplete the number of kits we have. The person I sent told her that the message is an instruction, and that if she has objections she should call me.”
“Later we discovered that we do not have the kits as she said. We have kits for only 95 people and not 3,500. I asked her about this and she started giving excuses in a long story.
You leaders, you cannot even speak the truth; how do you expect to solve problems?” President Kagame added.
Coronavirus now known officially as COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
It has since spread beyond the shores of China with thousands of cases reported as well as hundreds of deaths.
Victims often suffer from respiratory illness and this new strain of coronavirus was not previously identified in humans.
Experts have always been worried about how the continent of Africa would react and whether it was ready to fight the spread.
Many African countries have been putting their health systems on alert to fight the spread of the virus.
Source: Africafeeds.com
