The medical supplies which Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has donated to Malawi for Covid-19 fight arrived in the country on Wednesday.
The supplies were delivered at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe from Addis Ababa by an Ethiopian Airlines plane.
Chinese Ambassador to Malawi Liu Hongyang tweeted that more donations from China are on the way to help fight Covid-19.
“We are in this together with Malawi,” said Liu.
Ma recently announced that he will donate to each one of the 54 African countries 20,000 testing kits, 100,000 masks and 1000 protective suits.
According to Ma, 1.1 million testing kits, 6 million masks and 60,000 protective suits were delivered in Ethiopia where the Ethiopian government managed the logistics of distributing the items to other African countries.
He said in the statement that the aim of the donation is to ensure that Africa is ahead of the virus by taking precautions and getting prepared ahead of time.
“We cannot ignore the potential risk to Africa and assume that this continent of 1.3 billion people will blissfully escape the crisis. The world cannot afford the unthinkable consequences of a Covid-19 pandemic in Africa,” he said.
Ma, through the Jack Ma foundation, has also made donations to countries in Asia and South America.
The coronavirus pandemic began last year in China where over 81,000 cases and more than 3,100 deaths have been recorded so far.
In Africa, over 2,000 cases have been registered in 46 countries with South Africa having more than 700 cases. On 25 March, a total of 64 deaths had been recorded on the continent.
Malawi is yet to record a case of the coronavirus but its neighbhours Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania have cases.
