{UAH} CORVID-19: MOPPING THE VERANDAH DOES NOT MEAN THE BEDROOM IS NOW CLEAN.

As I was biting some fried cassava chips (akawogo) in these tough quarantine poverty times, I started thinking about the population flocking daily on foot to town at 5am, then returning home in the evening before curfew time without having gotten anything to feed their children because normal business is in lockdown anyway. I suddenly got a deja-vu feeling of refugees and internally displaced people in post-conflict humanitarian crisis situations where I used to serve as a volunteer.

The masses are all coming out of their homes despite being asked to "Stay Safe. Stay home!" because they find it difficult to understand being asked to die of hunger in lockdown so as not to die of the corona virus. Meanwhile, based on news reports, we can title this new quarantine/lockdown extension as "Hunger in the City: Sex for food in cargo Trucks".

This is said to be one of the areas where the pandemic is spreading. It also used to be the same category of people that were said to be the most active in spreading HIV when that epidemic started.

Many individuals having HIV/AIDS in the country today might suspect that there line of infection most likely includes a truck driver decades ago.

Now do Ugandans remember recently when the international media was alarmed that the total confirmed cases of global corona virus infections had hit one million?

Well just two weeks after that milestone, the world quietly surpassed 2 million confirmed cases. And today, just one week after that, the world is now about to reach 3 million confirmed cases.

Let me repeat this again! While the corvid-19 pandemic took five months to go from zero to one million cases globally, the virus then took just two weeks to double that number. Then it took just one week to add yet another million victims on top of that, and now the total stands at nearly 3 million confirmed cases.

At this pace, the pandemic might reach the 4 million mark by next Wednesday.

Yes my friend. And if anyone in Africa ever thought that the pandemic was over, let that exponential growth rate first sink in for a while.

From the overall perspective the global curve has clearly not been flattened. The danger is still alive. It's as if all the social distancing and lockdowns have barely dented it's lightening spread.

This is a warning to all of us here in Africa. And if that is how fast the corona virus is still spreading worldwide, then surely the same pace is quietly happening in African countries where there is limited testing.

This publicly available knowledge and accurate data that should enable policy makers to analyse successes, define challenges and study weaknesses in our common fight against the corona virus pandemic, should also help determine the next best steps forward. Most of all, this trend must allow for realistic forecasting and planning.

As informed by the WHO guidelines, three priority issues are considered to be what the medical efforts should focus on urgently.

1- Mass testing.

2 - Mass testing.

3 - Mass testing.

This simple public health policy means ensuring that all health centers, clinics and hospitals around the country are able to conduct mass testing of the population immediately when anyone shows any of the corvid-19 symptoms.

The logic is not rocket science. It is said to be the only way to establish the prevalence of the disease.

Does anyone know any other way?

Health services can thereby quickly detect and isolate any positive cases, plus the persons who might have come in contact with the patient.

Mass testing is therefore the basic clinical imperative of stopping the spread of the actual disease.

So in terms of priorities, all other activities are peripheral to mass testing.

Conducting a few daily tests at the one government laboratory at Entebbe on samples now exclusively from truck drivers at the borders is scientifically insufficient in a pandemic that we all know has made inroads within the population.

What if for example, we have a million Ugandans right now infected with the virus in our suburbs and slums?

Who has checked?

And how will the people of Uganda therefore survive the silent spread of the pandemic?

I am not a learned professional doctor, but anyone taking the time to get the basic information about epidemics automatically knows that in a situation where we have one of the fastest spreading viruses ever, all the billions of shillings being spent on peripheral issues while ignoring the priority of mass testing can all turn out to be money that was just  thrown away.

Even the well meaning donations of food to the 'vulnerable poor" is money thrown away if there is no mass testing. Because then the virus will just continue being around and spreading, and we will have to endure more lockdowns even if we might ever get out of the current one.

It's like choosing to die with a full stomach rather than survive corona. A typical African dilemma. Yet we can choose both the full stomach and surviving the virus.

Meanwhile, imagine that most of the 45 million citizens have sacrificed their jobs, their education and their livelihoods in lockdown to contain the pandemic, and it all goes to waste simply because the pandemic is facilitated to spread, and someone ignored mass testing by finding excuses not to try and purchase enough rapid test kits, thereby failing to protect the lives and livelihoods of the people of this country.

I am saying this because I am sure many are scared to raise this disturbing discrepancy.

We need to immediately invest approximately 60% of all the national Corvid 19 budget and 60% of all financial donations exclusively for purchasing rapid test kits and distributing them to all health centers, pharmacists and hospitals.

But when for example the army and security agencies take the biggest share of the corvid-19 budget, and nothing is set aside for mass testing, are we hoping that our gallant soldiers are going to shoot the virus dead with AK 47's? Or are  the LDU's going to cane corvid away after curfew hours?

We have to rationalize policy and pandemic response. The people of Uganda are being diverted to fictitious priorities as if deploying soldiers and receiving donations of cars will stop the pandemic.

Who is the one fooling themselves?

As a humble tax-paying citizen of this country worried that the entire nation's leadership seems to be completely focusing on funds and other non-medical issues while totally forgetting to resolve the more cardinal pressing issue of clearing the actual disease from our midst, I have a simple inquiry for the Ministry of health.

What are the Ministry's estimates as to the pandemics unconfirmed status in the country?

If you only mop your verandah (the border tests), do you then start celebrating that the whole house is now clean?

Isn't that tantamount to putting the lives of the people of this country in danger?

Furthermore, the Ministry of health has already indicated pneumonia as the most lethal ailment for any person suffering from corona virus infection. This is also the information provided by the World Health Organization, the Chinese government, and many Western countries currently facing what seems like the worst of the corvid-19 pandemic.

It is because of the overwhelming number of pneumonia attacks on corona virus patients that all international news reports are screaming about the need for ventilators.

This medical device has become one of the most sought after equipments worldwide as overseas countries' health infrastructure grapples to cope with saving the lives of an increasing number of the critically ill cases of people running short of breath in their hospitals Intensive care units (ICU)

Now a quick question: How many pneumonia cases in total does the Uganda Ministry of Health currently have in all government health centers, clinics and hospitals across the country and how many of them have been tested for Corvid-19?

I hope the Ministry of health might possibly be able to provide the data and any necessary clarification in response to this question during one of their press conferences.

Meanwhile, on the socio-economic debate, if we compared lockdown conditions, in Europe for example, every individual citizen receives all kinds of financial assistance from the government even when there is no crisis/lockdown.

Indeed in ordinary times, the average European receives;

- Family allowance.

- Sick leave benefits.

- Unemployment benefits.

- Retirement benefits.

- Guaranteed salary

- Minimum wage.

- Government social security benefits

- Even housing benefits.

All these come in separate monthly cheques from their governments, their city councils, their employers, and their welfare offices. They call themselves capitalists but this level of state assistance is outright befitting of Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile it is the Western developed nations which in the 1990's advised the so called "new breed of African dictators" to divest and sell all their countries national assets and state-owned enterprises. Claiming that "governments have no business being in business". That "governments should not be welfare states". Basically telling Africans that the best economic model is "Everyone to fend for themselves", and "Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will solve all our socio-economic problems".

Where is all that economic backbone now?

In Uganda for example, the people have not forgotten how all state assets and enterprises were sold following "economic experts advice" from abroad under World Bank/IMF adjustment programs despite the peoples incessant complaints against such a corrupt policy.

In relation to the corvid-19 pandemic, governments now do not have any extra state financial resources that would have allowed any African government to offer citizens monthly benefits as Europeans get.

When will we accept that our current economic model has failed the people, our economic priorities have failed the people, our investment policy framework has failed the people, and that all these have to change in order to fully benefit the people first?

Following their own mismanagement coupled with their own greed plus what they were told by so-called foreign experts, some African leaders essentially depleted the welfare capacity of the state and that should be put squarely on ignorance, or misunderstanding of the purpose of state enterprises, or simply the corrupt mentality of these leaders.

Now look at what is happening. It is the government begging from the citizenry and the business community at a time when the government is supposed to be supporting the nation get through the pandemic.

A few days ago South Africa declared billions of dollars in economic stimulus package. Other countries in Africa and overseas are doing the same. But here it is the opposite. The people are being asked to donate to the government.

Given all the anger currently going around especially since the extension of the nationwide lockdown plus the stupid misappropriation of funds and food intended for the poor, the people of Uganda, starting with the poorest of the poor, have the legitimacy to start refusing to bear the burden of any further lockdown dictates imposed on them by those in state luxuries who are actually not enduring any suffering or making any personal sacrifices.

By Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin

Thursday 23rd/04/2020

Kampala Uganda.

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