Features

Lessons from the past in handling Covid-19 infection cases

Tuesday, July 21st, 2020 00:00 | By
President Uhuru Kenyatta giving a State of the Nation address Photo/PD/FILE

As the daily rate of Covid-19 infections increase rapidly following the easing of some of the restrictions put in place to contain the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that the country is approaching the peak, which, according to government modelling, should be in September.

Experts are already warning that the bulging numbers could overwhelm the country’s healthcare system sooner rather than later, unless the tide is arrested.

Even more worrying are reports that the disease has struck several government agencies, with hundreds of civil servants testing positive for Covid-19.

Latest reports indicate that two Cabinet Secretaries, one powerful principal secretary as well as an MP who holds a senior position in the National Assembly are among those who have tested positive for the disease.

Among the high profile government institutions reeling from the effects of the pandemic include State House, the National Treasury, the ICT ministry and the Public Service Commission where operations have been drastically scaled down or halted altogether after employees tested positive.

That the pandemic has struck at the heart of government calls for some serious reflection on the whole approach taken in the wake of the pandemic, including how the Kenyan society has handled those infected and their families.

Granted, statements have been made about stigmatisation of victims which seems to have been started by overzealous government agents who treated earliest Covid-19 victims as outcasts and dangerous individuals condemned to die.

Now that the reality of Covid-19 has hit home, with the sobering message that the disease does not respect status or background, the State must surely find itself in a dilemma on how to communicate cases involving top officials after planting the stigma seed and watching it flourish.

Whatever it takes the government must now find a way of dealing with perceptions about the virus and make Kenyans understand that, as Health minister Mutahi Kagwe has said time and again, anyone can get infected, and the best remedy for this virus is avoiding infection.

Lessons from the past, especially the fight against the HIV/Aids pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s, have shown that stigmatisation of a disease can seriously undermine the greater goal of eradicating it.

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