RAMADAN IS HERE AGAIN AS WE FIGHT TO DEFEAT COVID 19
The Ramadan period for this year is underway. Our Muslim brothers and sisters look forward to this period – one of the five pillars of their faith to, among other things, confirm their commitment to the worship of Allah.
This year Ramadan takes on an added significance given the situation the world finds itself in. Let’s put it straight - THE WORLD IS SICK, VERY SICK INDEED! Tens of thousands are dead. As we write more infections and deaths are showing up. There is no cure or vaccine for the coronavirus. Scientists are scrambling from country to country, laboratory to laboratory while the world prays for God to intervene and show compassion. That’s why this Ramadan is so important.
In good old Sierra Leone our figures are rising slowly, sadly steadily. Still very low compared to our neighbors in West Africa, but whenever we turn our eyes to the column showing the number of people in quarantine we conclude that the infection rate will surely grow and possibly the death rate. So we have to do the following things, among many others:
1. Let’s pray for the intervention of God. We can use science and other conventional tactics but we desperately need Almighty God to take control of the situation and it shall be well before we realize what was going on in fact. In Sha Allah!
2. Our Muslim brothers and sisters should offer special prayers for this country and the world throughout this period. Even from their homes as communal worship is suspended because of the same virus.
3. On the ground, let’s keep our borders with our immediate neighbors close until they turn the tide against COVID 19. We will never be safe while Guinea and Liberia are in difficulty.
4. Quarantine facilities must be what they are. Our relatives who are there should be reasonably well treated until they complete their period in isolation.
5. Let’s pray for our leaders. They have a very delicate job guiding this nation through these turbulent times. We need them to be well at all times. Their well-being is tied to the health of the nation. Long Live Sierra Leone, especially as we celebrate Independence Day this week!
SOCIAL MEDIA HYPERACTIVITY COMPLICATING COVID 19 FIGHT
We recognize the role of social media in everything we do these days – from politics to sports, from business to travel and from fashion to love. But as we fight the coronavirus in Sierra Leone, we are beginning to worry a lot about the way some people are using social media to share information about the fight against COVID 19. People share all types of unverified information including pictures despite the fact that an official source for COVID 19 information and general update exists and is widely publicized. It is also very easily accessible. So what’s this rush to publish unverified or unsourced things on social media?
We understand why people are anxious and why people want to be told everything particularly about our COVID 19 situation, but how does sharing baseless – and often politically-motivated – comments on 15 or 20 WhatsApp Groups make that possible? We don’t think that helps at all. Here are some points to remember.
1. Ordinary members of society have always distrusted governments but some have now taken things to a whole new level. It’s totally impossible for any government to manipulate COVID-19 figures because they are not alone in this. There are several partners fighting this thing who have no interest manipulating things. That is if for some reason people wrongly believe our government is doing that.
2. In this over-politicized little space we call Sierra Leone, people spend all their time talking politics and planning for elections due THREE YEARS away. What’s really happening to this country? Why mix politics with our fight against such a dangerous enemy?
3. Somebody asked on a few Groups the other why there were no COVID-19 deaths in Sierra Leone and a day later a fatality was reported. It’s almost as if that Sierra Leonean was praying for somebody to die of the disease. He was among the first people to share pictures of an unrelated death claiming it was a COVID-19 death. When the truth was revealed he couldn’t bring himself to apologize. Shame!
4. The day Principal went into quarantine after addressing the nation to announce that one of his many guards had tested positive with COVID-19, social media went into overdrive with all sorts or speculation and vicious spewing of hate. We repeat an earlier point in this column that speculating about the health of anybody is wrong. Totally wrong!
5. We don’t believe what we have said here will change the current trend. Some countries have put people in jail for the kind of things people are doing here with COVID-19 misinformation. Maybe we shouldn’t go down that route. For us, we are just happy that we’ve pointed out this easily avoidable problem.
WORLD MALARIA DAY GOES BY UNNOTICED
Understandably everybody’s attention is focused on fighting coronavirus such that the age-old struggle against the bigger killer of Africans, malaria, did not receive the normal and deserved attention this year. World Malaria Day set aside to draw the attention of the world to this tropical disease only attracted a few column inches in some newspapers and slots on radio stations. In fact, there is no prize for suggesting that money may have been diverted from the frontline against malaria to the current pandemic.
The other thing we should point out is that hospital attendance across the board has fallen sharply since coronavirus landed in Sierra Leone. We have visited some health posts and spoken to health workers to be able to say this with a degree of certainty. This is not a good situation. The other day we saw text messages from UNFPA urging pregnant women not to be afraid of going to hospitals and ask for the normal services. We need to do more than that.
In some areas outside Freetown, we were told that patients abandoned hospitals where they had been admitted and returned home. Could it then be that they really didn’t need to be in bed in the first place? Or has anybody checked what subsequently happened to them? We appreciate the sacrifice being made by our health care workers, and we call on them to manage this situation very well. Don’t win the war against coronavirus and lose many more lives to easily preventable diseases. Good luck.
BO AND THE MENACE OF ARMED ROBBERY
In the last week or so we received consistent reports from our correspondent in Bo about a spate of armed robbery incident in that city, at a time when nobody expects to hear such noise because the nation is under a curfew from 9pm to 6am. How could anybody explain this? On a normal day 9pm in Bo is very early evening. Bo is a lively place attracting many people from across the country for business, education and ordinary visit.
These days by 9pm only armed security forces are mandated to be on the streets enforcing the curfew. They cannot be everywhere at the same time but the fact that these armed patrols can move really fast means criminals should be very brave to attempt to break into homes and businesses. So we’ve been trying to understand what’s really going on in Bo.
1. It is likely the armed patrols in Bo are too few and infrequent to scare away determined criminals in that big city. Maybe the patrols are not very mobile as we expect them to be.
2. In one major incident we heard that a diamond office located not far from a security post was raided by the criminals, causing significant distress to the businessman. Where were the state security at post – or were they sleeping?
3. We were hoping that a civilian element will form part of the night operations so that our soldiers and police can benefit from the young people’s knowledge of the place and for intelligence gathering. Is there no police partnership structure out there?
4. Why not work with communities to re-activate the Neighborhood Watch program that used to work so well over the years? All those young people need is small financial support and a few armed officers. That’s all!
5. The current IG is credited with clearing Makeni of armed robbers in one of his last deployments before becoming IG. So he knows what to do in Bo. We didn’t want to say this but could it be that there are some rogue elements within the security forces that are doing all this? We hope to know the answer sooner or later.
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