Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA Network, a coalition of religious organizations that works for international finance system reform, says the plan will provide much-needed relief to countries like the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Niger and Rwanda.

He spoke to VOA from Washington, via WhatsApp.  

“When we're dealing with the reality that on average, countries across sub-Saharan Africa have an average of 50 critical care units, we know that they're not going to be able to deal with minor elements of the crisis, let alone more significant ones," he said. "In part, that's why we saw all the finance ministers across Africa, almost three weeks ago now, step up and say we need to be able to stop paying debts for all African countries, making a call to stop and suspend debt payments for $44 billion because they knew that was money that could be quickly invested, moved very quickly into economies to be able to get the ventilators, to be able to increase health systems so that they might be able to combat the virus.” 

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