COVID 19: A developmental opportunity

By Talemoh Wycliffe Dah MD
These are challenging times for the world, and much more so for Nigeria. A novel virus, intending to devastate the world, has crept into our bosom, exposing our underbelly. Like a reasoning being, the virus seems to know that we in Nigeria are used to death in ways more brutal than it can unleash, and has decided to expose us, since we still have some collective pride as a people. This can, paradoxically, be an advantage to us if we can choose to decide that this present low is our rock bottom.
If we refuse to choose the now as our lowest and put aside shame, pretense, differences and greed, we will sink lower. What we fail to understand is that people are watching and if we decide not to see our profanity before the world, the world still sees us as profane. If we decide that the now is our rock bottom, COVID 19 presents a developmental opportunity.
In what ways have COVID 19 exposed us? In our culture of choosing fire brigade approach to issues rather than adequate preparation; in our feigning that our systems work when none does; in our habit of copying verbatim from others even when our context is different; in our lack of foresight to harness the opportunities in every challenge we have; and in our poverty and unrefined sociology.
The virus has exposed the erasing of the difference between truth and lies in our society; it has shown that we can’t walk the talk and that we do not have control over what the populace chooses to do.
To be honest, we had adequate time to have prepared well to contain and ameliorate the effects of the virus. We saw the disease spreading and heard the WHO DG change its status from an epidemic to a pandemic disease meaning we could assume that it was here already even when we had no case. Preparation include educating Nigerians and I think we did well on that.
Beyond, that, however, is to prepare for the worst should that happen. We already had an Ebola template, acclaimed to be excellent as we escaped that scourge using it few years ago. We had time to build on that, adapting and strengthening it against COVID 19. The issue of isolation facilities should have been sorted out since. Hospitals should have been made to check and prove their readiness in terms of training, supplies, process flow and so on. Every organization should have been made to have a COVID Desk that will see to the preparation.
Preparation should have seen us setting up and manufacturing our supplies, knowing that our borders may need to be shut and that supplies will be diverted to the worst hit countries. The supplies needed for the prevention of COVID 19 (face masks, gloves, hand sanitisers, etc) are the least in medical technology, both in costs and sophistication.
Yet, we have no factories manufacturing them because they are easier to import and those who should think for us are not endowed with the foresight to establish them. We should have thought of every aspect of our economy. All preparation would have informed how much funds we should put up to fight the virus.
We have seen how our systems find it difficult to deliver what is expected of them. From the airport, our tracking system could not get adequate information to trace contacts. If papers were filled at all, no one probably looked at them to ascertain whether they were right or not.
Our national embarrassment start from our ports. Airport staff ask people for money and when given anything can slip through. Is this greed, indiscipline, effect of low or unpaid salaries, unsupervised code of conduct or a result of all of these? Leave the airport and you are carried away by drivers that are difficult to trace. Try to call the numbers on receipts and they are not going through or somebody else answers. At the hotels they just tell you to put your name and number and then sign, even when you are a first timer there. None of your documents is copied. There is a manifest at the park, but it is only name and number, which you fill, unverified before you commence your journey in a crowded vehicle.
The health system, a sure place of call for infected individuals, is ill-prepared for its functions. Since we cannot give patients appointment for different periods and the patients often overwhelm the system, you could have two doctors consulting at the same time, defying the need for auditory and visual privacy. The taps may not be running and there may be no soap for hands to be washed between patients. In the wards the beds are crowded and when it is visiting time humans also form their crowd. There are no protective gears for the health workers so they are the formites on which Corona virus can be transferred among patients and to the health workers’ families.
We have a culture of copying from industrialised/developed countries and the Corona virus has also exposed us here. We copied self-isolation and told our people to do just that, not minding our contextual realities. We tout our housing deficits yet we tell a man who uses a two bedroom house with his family of six to self-isolate. Even when he has a whole ten bedroom house to himself and can afford to be off work for two weeks without starving, he will need to get out and buy fuel for his generator. He will need water and gas or something that gets him out of the house. In other climes you order and pay for groceries online and they are brought to you and you pick them without contact with the supplier.
In other climes people are given some stipend because they are asked to increase the social distance and stay at home and may not earn money for that time. In copying we deleted this part even though a large portion of our population feed from what they earn that day. This would have been the best time for the social security handouts so these people do not pose security problems to us. We tell people to cough or sneeze into their elbow not minding that in our environment more than sixty percent wear short sleeve or sleeveless because of the heat.
Experts in different fields should sit down and fashion what will work for us and present same to government for implementation. The wheel may not need to be reinvented but can be fashioned to suit our context. Accepting the adage that you do not need to reinvent the wheel has robbed the world of other means of transportation we would have had by now. For example, instead of building isolation facilities, we can designate whole facilities for isolation in states. In the FCT, for instance, one of the government hospitals can be designated as isolation facility should the need later arise and staff redeployed as need be.
School closure is the easiest and lowest hanging fruit for government to score a point and be seen as doing something. This is so because it costs nothing to government. The transport home is borne by parents and how the curriculum is covered is not their business. Unfortunately, school closure is also a victim of perennial electioneering campaigns intentionally heated up by politicians and of conflicts and natural disasters.
For COVID 19, it is safer for students in boarding schools to remain in schools than for them to travel home in public transport vehicles, get home and mix with the general society. It is an opportunity to practice handling supply and group-isolation logistics with children and staff in a boarding school. We cannot quantify the losses in closing schools for whatever reasons.
The virus has exposed a dangerous trend in our society where truth and lies cannot be differentiated. Because the main media are tardy and sometimes economical with the truth, the social media have taken over as a source of (mis)information. This is unfortunate and unhealthy but throws up an opportunity for us to find smart ways of filtering news. The ‘how to’ is the business of experts. If we do it using this COVID 19 opportunity, we will enjoy it for all other things.
COVID 19 should help us learn to walk the talk. Barely 24 hours after asking people to avoid crowded areas and lengthen social distance, the President took photographs with people under his big gown and some public officers were seen at a crowded gathering. This both speaks and mutes volumes. So the public expectedly refuses to adhere to instructions as evidence by thousands sitting/standing side by side during Jumaat Prayers and Sunday services within 72 hours of government’s instructions.
If we learn lessons and practice handling challenges from COVID 19, it will be a good starting point or turn around for other maladies of our nation. Socrates said “One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom”. Agreeing with himself that he knew nothing, he began to search for knowledge and became one of the wisest philosophers.
So let us agree we are not at our best so we can start to squarely address our challenges one by one. Each effort is like adding a line to a blank paper; with time and number, the whole paper will appear as if it were painted. That is nation building and it is the responsibility of all of us through all time.
▪ Dah, a consultant gynaecologist, is based in Abuja