I will like to add my voice to the very few Ghanaians who have diverse views about the best way to fighting this pandemic.
I am not just a concerned African child, I am a front liner in the fight against this famous pandemic, covid 19. I am an Emergency Medical Service professional. So I think I should share my views and expect that the governors of this country as well as any African country to consider it.
Before I gets into the stem of my content, I want to appeal to my readers, especially you, to make sure you push this agenda as far as you can to enable our leaders get it and work with it. The governors of the country includes you and I, our traditional leaders, the religious leadership and the politicians who are currently ruling or waiting to rule.
No one is expected of me to use his/her money, power or physical energy that will be significant as compared to the positive effects of the matter which I,m about to communicate to you in promoting this my view.
There has been various measures put in place by affected countries as far as managing this pandemic is concerned but no one has been able to managed the situation to its satisfaction.
What I want to suggest is how to finance the mass testing which some people are proposing. The mass testing is the best of all the management methods so far. Africans will be saved from this pandemic only if we are able to known the number of positives and isolate them from further spreading. We ourselves are the only ones that can protect our race from been wiped off from this planet. Our worry might be how to finance it and I think we can if both of us want to. Collectively, if there is the “will” there will definitely be a way, words of the late Kwabena Nesta Bob Marley.
Ghana is ready to spend $100 million in building an extra modern cathedral for the people of Ghana. I do not know where this money will come from, but what I know is that such amount is going to be used for the benefit of the living Ghanaians. I also do not know how much it will cost the nation to embark on this mass testing but I,m sure it will not cost the life of a single Ghanaian. This $100m plus can be channelled into fighting this pandemic instead of building a luxurious place of worship. Life before luxury. We can live to build many of these cathedrals, if even we want to build one each for our 16 regions.
I known this decision will be a difficult one to make but if we both are able to understand what awaits as if this Covid 19 gets ‘crazy’ on us, we will not have any difficulty in making this decision.
Come to think of the worse situation where your District Government hospital facility will be choked to its capacity, nurses, doctors and other clinical professionals will have no space to operate. Well, you might not even find them, and if you do, you might not be willingly to even take your child who has malaria to the same facility. The morgue might even get full.
The mass testing if to be carried out, the county will have to acquire the testing equipments and install them in the existing labs in the various District Hospitals across the country. Already trained Lab technicians will be employed to make use of these equipments effectively. The secondary schools that are currently empties can be used as isolation centers for all those tested positive. The survival rate will increase if the positives are kept and managed at these isolation centers. The current system where we encourage self quarantine without test will not help the situation. A lot of patients are likely to die in their homes and that will create serious situation in the country.
I known the President of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo is a listening president and will not disagree with our concerns as Ghanaians.
Zudana Azudaa, (Pan African Writer)
