Across borders, nations are fighting against an invisible enemy. From taking up newspapers’ headlines and television airtime, Covid_19 has become the evil talk of the city and has surely proven mankind’s ‘powerless’.
With 12,960 cases confirmed (as of 10th April), Africa seems to have the smallest number of people affected by the coronavirus. Just like other African countries with poor health systems, Uganda has put up various measures to prevent the worst from happening since they lack a number of equipment to counter the man-killer.
Dr Fernando Rico, a missionary Spanish doctor working with Zia Angelina Health Centre in Namugongo, describes the situation as critical. He argues that if Covid-19 is putting the health system of the United states and Italy on their knees, what should be expected of the Ugandan health system? He’s hope is to learn from the experiences of other countries where they are handling it with more efficiency.
“We will have more information but the Health Centre as small as it is, will continue to work using what is available for the community despite the luck of equipment to test Covid_19.”
Uganda is one of the East African countries after Rwanda that has shown serious concern in reducing the spread of the disease. With its borders closed, Uganda has adopted the quarantine measure for everyone since 19th March before it registered its first case. Today the country has confirmed 53 cases with 3 covered and zero death. Kampala is one of the busiest towns the region was deserted as the public means of transport was cut off but permitted food markets to operate.
Dr Fernando admits that there are a number of challenges that they are facing as a Health Centre with different people with cough, asthma or pulmonic issues run to them thinking that they might be infected.
The inundation of information from unknown sources on the various social media platforms are making the situation worse since it carries a lot of fake news. “People should be a bit critical to be able to distinguish from imagination and scientific facts but there is hope that in few weeks, I think, the health education will be able to pass correct the information about the Covid-19 and reduces the confusions or uncertainty,” Said Dr Fernando.
Dr Fernando also expresses fear of people being manipulated by others since many lack knowledge about the disease and also invites everyone to live without anxiety. He also encourages everyone to depend on credible sources for information to avoid miscommunication from citizen journalists on social media.
