Bloomberg Philanthropies made very early investments in strengthening the capacity of health care systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ethiopia, when there were less than 20 cases, Bloomberg’s on-the-ground partners helped the government assess the feasibility of implementing social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions and develop media campaigns to effectively communicate the risks of COVID-19 and proper health and safety measures.

Together with Vital Strategies’ Resolve to Save Lives and the World Health Organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies helped the country boost daily testing capacity, set up a contact tracing program, train thousands of health care workers in infection prevention and control, and improve mortality data collection processes to better measure the scale of the pandemic.