Brig. (Rtd) Kellie Hassan Conteh is the Interim National Coordinator of the National Coronavirus Emergency Operation Center (NACOVERC).
Kemo Cham spoke with him about the response effort from the onset, the successes, the challenges and the future.
Conteh, who is the Minister of Defence, shares his time between the NACOVERC and the Ministry of Defense. While hailing the steps taken by the government and highlighting the gains he said were the result of those initial proactive moves, he also expressed frustration over some issues he believes are holding back Sierra Leone’s progress both in the Covid-19 response and its development in general.
Politico: It will be hundred days this Thursday since we recorded our first case of Covid-19. And you have been in charge of the country’s response. What do you have to show for your stewardship?
We started in a very humble state, thanks for the leadership of His Excellency [President Julius Maada Bio] we were proactive into looking ahead, even before we had that first case. We started by establishing formidable defenses at our points of entry – Kambia [Gbalamuya] and other areas including Gendema on the Liberian border. We started putting in place our teams to start looking at people coming in.
The airport took the best part of our concern because by that time Covid had not entered Sierra Leone but we knew it would come, it was just a matter of time.
The other thing we did was to close the border – I mean the airport itself, not to allow people bring in Covid. Now unfortunately, I think a few days before that, I am sure some of the flights that came in, must have come in with positive cases. Remember when we started we were targeting countries that had 50 or more cases then. Unfortunately, before the date of closure, we had a few cases that came in and those are the ones that we were trying to battle because those were the ones that went into the communities.
We started with a basic 30 bed facility at the 34 Military Hospital (MH). From that point until now, we are talking about over 800 beds. In fact, by yesterday (July 6) they were talking about a thousand or so beds. This is a formidable achievement, because we had nothing. We started from zero.
Some other achievements included increasing our laboratory facilities, which we had a big challenge in. It was only the 34MH that had it, thanks to the Chinese people. We also had a rudimentary one in Kenema. It had other qualities but not specifically for Covid. But today we have expanded it to about five or so countrywide.
We have also increased the number of medical staff – the technical ones - to do surveillance issues generally, which includes contact tracers, case investigators and that has increased considerably. We still have some ways to go, but we have increased our capacity considerably in that area.
Other issues to do with setting up the teams to support the DHMTs (District Health Management Teams) up country has also been developed. We have established the DICOVERCs [District Health Management Teams] in all of the districts.
Yes, we do have some ways to go, because we need to capacitate them further with their equipment and the resources they need. We do not have, for instance, the transport fleet that we enjoyed during Ebola. We know that. But we continue to support them, whichever way we can. We have also improved on our quarantine facilities. Yes there are still measures to do, but we have improved quite a lot in all of these areas.
Clearly that’s quite a lot you have done. But the ultimate goal was to have prevented us from getting to where we are today. When we shut down the country back in April we had just about seven cases. And we are talking about reopening when we have cases in hundreds and we are recording large daily figures. Something doesn't feel right here? Don't you think?
Government’s intention is to firstly protect lives, but also protect livelihoods. We do not want to forget the socio-economic impact this has on our people. For many of our homes it’s a day to day thing; people fend for themselves on a day–to-day basis. It’s not like other economies where they can afford to shut down for long periods. So whiles we want to prevent fatalities, we also must be concerned about the economic side of things and open up people’s livelihoods. It’s a fine line one has to decide on and many countries are battling with that decision. Do you close down permanently? Can you afford it?
We have made a choice that we cannot afford it. In fact it was getting to the nerves of most of our people. If you realized, people even started doing things circumventing the measures that were put together. It became a fighting match all the time trying to chase them.
Yes, we stopped most of them, but you could not stop everybody altogether. So this is a decision government had to take and we have taken this decision and we want to see what will happen.
For some of the cases that went during the lock down, that is again for the same reasons. People had legitimate reasons to go and they obtained passes.
When we closed the districts the goal was to prevent the virus from reaching those parts of the country that didn’t have it. And here we are. Clearly there were problems with the measures you put in place.
Yes. There are problems. And there is always problem in a situation like this. Every country has faced their own unique problems trying to put measures in place.
Mind you, our society had this attack by this virus, where societies were open, people were free to go about their business. It is not like war where bullets and bombs are dropping. This is an invisible enemy we are fighting and we have the question of compliance from our people trying to understand this thing. Up till now countries that are even well advanced are struggling to find out what this thing is all about. So we have the same challenge here. We are trying to understand what it is all about and we are fighting to stop the epicenter here.
We have people who are in denial still, that we don’t have Covid. Some even think we are just trying to make money out of this. They don’t face the reality.
It has been about three months and we still have the issue of denial. I tend to think that it is because we have not enforced our measures. Social distancing, for instance, we have spoken about the markets. Nobody seems to have any answer to the problem there. That’s understandable, even if not acceptable. But with public transport. It’s overloaded, beyond imagination. The police can prevent it but they aren’t. What do you say about this?
Again, that is a factor of our general society. I think we are looking at the issues in bits and pieces. These are simply symptoms of a society that has a big challenge. Our society today has a challenge of the psyche of our people. And I think it is a fundamental issue we must address comprehensively for us to make any headway. I am saying this in very serious terms that we were always criticized, for instance, that the judiciary is week… when it comes to the teachers, something happens, we criticize the teachers… But I see a bigger picture and we are missing the point. And the big picture is that our country has a problem. It is endemic. It’s within us. It is entrenched. We are divided on several lines: politically, tribally, regionally, we are divided. It’s not a nation organized for development. I can tell you this for free. We don’t seem to be together in a united front to deal with developmental issues. So that is why in the very first place, people are first of all anti-authority. And also it depends on the messenger that is passing the message. As soon as you come in front of them you have to belong to either their region or their tribe. Or their party for them to pay attention to you.
We have jumped over all that bridge. We came to the communities and included their own community leaders. We still find people in denial. And when you consider some of these things, you begin to ask yourself, why is this so.
People think generally that when you obey law in this country, it means you are a coward. You find people mocking their friends for wearing mask. That’s the thinking.
Look at the challenges we are having about payment of salaries and allowances of health workers. Again you have dirty minded people in the system whose sole aim is actually to make profit out of this selfishly.
It’s a wide range of issues.
I think you guys in the press owe it to all of us to really do some keen research in this area, otherwise you will just be picking on the bits and pieces. But we won’t be going anywhere.
The problem is that we don’t seem to have been enforcing the rules. I have seen a police officer standing in front of a taxi that carried three people at the back seat, against the rule to carry only two people. He did nothing about it. So maybe the IGP hasn’t got the message or he didn’t pass the message down well.
He has go the message. He has passed it. And I am telling you it’s the society we found ourselves. That policeman was brought in either corruptly or through some force of hand by some political guru that forces the system to employ these Tom, Dick or Harry, wherever this person comes from, as long as he fits his own criteria. We are not allowing our system to recruit the right kind of people in these institutions.
You cannot create a police force out of the moon. You create it out of your very society. So the psyche of that guy coming into the force is totally wrong. Even with the wealth of training they get – six months, nine months, whatever, the man is not even there.
So I am talking about an overall recalibration of our society for use to get these things right, because they are given instructions, I saw the IG’s instructions, I saw it clearly. I saw it written, saw it delivered to those who are supposed to enforce them. But it’s not working.
We know societies that have obeyed have managed to bring this thing down. Watch the system, those societies that have become recalcitrant, disobedient, the thing goes up.
We are seeing this. So it’s not a question of that they don’t know. They are seeing it. Our psyche here is a difficult thing.
If somebody reads what you have just said they would say it’s a hopeless situation…
No. It is not hopeless. And that is why we continue to fight. In our own case we have a job at hand. But I am saying, when I meet people like you who have the reach to people, I don’t want you to pay attention to the here and now. The picking of holes into bits and pieces. I think it is high time we began looking into this comprehensively.
When war break out. I am now the commander. I have no choice. I have to fight it. We will fight it the way we can, with all the tools we have available. But we are going to do this with the understanding that our compatriots will play their own part. We have to be responsible enough. Go to the beaches and see the type of people that are there. They have no respect for authority. So we are not giving up, but this is the situation.
Under this situation, it seems we cannot do anything about some of these issues. But there are others that we can do something. For example places of worship – mosques and churches. We continue shutting them down.
I think His Excellency has considered that. In fact he may be making an announcement about the reopening of them now. They wrote to him. They had a meeting and His Excellency threw back the issue at them to go and look through it and come up with measures they think they can put in place to maintain social distancing. They have done so and sent it to His Excellency and His Excellency turned it over to the technical people at NACOVERC. This has all been completed. It’s a process. And now I think he has the decision in his hands to announce this anytime he chooses. I am sure he will want to have some dialogue again with the authorities in the Inter-religious Council. And they will take it forward from there.
But we are to trying to give prioritizes to other kinds of endeavors over religious houses. That is not the case at all. The reason for that is that for religious houses, they are mostly indoors. And that’s a tricky bit, because we know Covid spreads faster when it’s an indoor activity. So it is different, for instance, with a market.
With churches and mosques they are always indoors and they are close together and people sing and shout and that’s the very thing we want to prevent. That’s why it is a little bit delayed but definitely not forever. It’s going to be opened soon.
You mentioned briefly the ongoing strike by medical workers. There may be many ways to explain it. But we know you – government – had an agreement with them. So if they are striking it means some aspects of that agreement hasn’t been met.
Yes. Certainly. This goes back to the issue of mentality and the way people do things. One would have thought that if you are making arrangement with a group of people, you already know the number, right? I don’t think some of those things were done properly. I will not go into the details of that as to who is to be blamed. I will not begin to point finger at anybody. But I think something was not done right.
Many questions remain unanswered. And some of these things happened outside NACOVERC - by Ministry of Health and Finance - but we are now using these staff and so we have to make sure we take care of their welfare. That’s how we have to come in. If we come in, the first question is, do you have the list. In many cases, it’s unfortunate, again for the same dubious reasons, some people either do not have the list or they are bloated so much, just because they want people to be receiving the allowances. Some of them are not even working in these institutions. We have had to bring in ACC to do investigations for us. As we speak, I am investigating several of these cases already.
So sometimes things happen because of our warped way of thinking, generally in the country. You cannot expect this coming from our health practitioners, senior ones for that matter, doing all of these. So if they are doing these and there are delays, they now instigate some of these strikes, even though the fault is coming from them.
For instance there was the case in one of our big hospitals here in Freetown, where the list was sent in the very night they were telling people to strike in the morning. And that’s very unfair.
With the fiducial system, there are benchmarks that you cannot circumvent. These guys are responsible for fiduciary issues. You send it to them they have to prudently check what it is they want to check, even go to the field sometimes. Even with the best of intentions, it takes hours to prepare these.
You didn’t come back to tell your own staff that the mistake is yours. They make it appear as if NACOVERC is not doing what it is supposed to be doing.
You have mentioned a lot of achievements you have attained. But still we know that DICOVERCs are struggling. People in quarantine homes are abandoning them for lack of food and other supports. Yet we are hearing talks of the government buying expensive vehicles.
In the first place, the whole allegation is misplaced. This speaks of how the press address issues here. We are not looking at things overall within the context it is happening.
They are talking about brand new SUVs have been bought, bla, bla, bla. Mind you, we do not have any vehicles allocated to this response. When I went in there we were renting vehicles; at the time it was about 140 vehicles, at the cost of Le850, 000 per day. Whether you run it or not you pay the Le850, 000. As a Sierra Leonean I am sure if you calculate this roughly, 140 vehicles, wouldn’t it strike you to say why don’t we start buying our own vehicles?
And then came the point where the coordinators were recruited. We had 16 coordinators. Four regional coordinators that are supposed to be deployed, none of whom have any vehicle. You would be thinking, why don’t we buy our own vehicles, especially so when the hired vehicles here in Freetown, if they cross Waterloo, you pay Le1, 200, 000. Not the Le850, 000 now. I am sure you will be wiser to start thinking of buying your own. And that’s what we did.
They say we bought brand new SUVs. No. We bought four Prados. And they are meant for the regional coordinators, who are Resident Ministers…
Who happen to have their own vehicles…
They don’t. You see these are the points you need to know. None of them has. Not a single one of them has any official vehicle. And you expect these guys to be traveling across all of their jurisdiction. You don’t expect them to be walking.
And because we wanted to make a difference between the vehicles the coordinators have and the vehicles their own bosses have, the coordinators are now given Pick-ups.
And these 30 vehicles, for crying out loud, is even small. We need far more vehicles. The vehicle I am using right now is NACOVERC vehicle, because as a minister I do not have a vehicle which is up and running. And I am supposed to be heading the thing. We have deputy ministers that do not have vehicles in their normal operations.
As head of NACOVERC there maybe one or two things you may want to see changed at the response level. What’s that?
The only thing I’d like to see happen is for all of us to redouble our efforts and strengthen the health system in this country. This is because of the assumption that are being made out there we came in and there was no quarantine places. Some people say there was not even any ICU.
Well, you don’t expect that in this response that has been put together in an emergency, one would have been thinking that these things are there already. Believe you me, we started from scratch. There was nothing. The IC Units we ever had in this country were all in Choitram Hospital. We heard people at Connaught saying we have four isolation beds. Can you imagine, a whole hospital! And we do not have it anywhere. So what I would really want to see, which is what we are fighting now, which His Excellency has sanctioned, we are fighting to strengthen our health system, so that Sierra Leone can never be caught again pants down like this. It’s disgraceful.
People are shouting, we went to the place, there was not even a good toilet. Well, you don’t build a toilet in a day. You don’t put up hospitals in one week, three months or even one year. You don’t set up ICUs in few weeks. These things take time.
When you say this, I tend to feel that someone is not giving the president the correct information. I am saying this because some months before Covid-19 erupted, we were told that Sierra Leone was ready to respond to any health emergency. This word came from the president himself…
I am sure at that time he was saying we were trying to preparing ourselves. And believe you me, it was good we were proactive to that point, because many other countries were caught surprisingly. We were better off. We had 30 beds when it came and today we are talking about a 1000 beds.
So what he was saying is in context. We need to understand that every country across the globe today has some kind of challenge they are facing with this same virus. People don’t seem to understand it still. And at that time I think we were thinking, we would not allow it to come into our country, or if it comes, we open our nets, each person that comes we quarantine them and keep them. That was a strategy. Unfortunately for us, before we short down, people with positive cases had come in. That’s where the whole thing collapsed in our hands. Many countries faced different types of challenges. Ours that was it.
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