Abdalah Abdulrahman
JF-Expert Member
- Aug 29, 2019
- 222
- 201
COVID-19 has clearly affected people’s lives worldwide. The most disruptions are being caused by factory-closures, total lockdown, border closures, and other strict measures that have resulted in a lack of essential goods and services, raw materials for industries, parts, and components.
Customs and port operations have slowed in developed countries and stopped in some of the developing countries. It is evident that the total lockdown strategy in developing countries has done more bad than good in fighting this COVID-19 pandemic. There is already evidence that measures that have been taken by some of the leaders were not well planned and therefore violated human rights, stimulated corruption, created un-accountability, and unnecessary fear to the public.
1. Poor planning
We all know that, there are laid criteria for prioritizing health crisis, these include analyzing the magnitude of the problem, finding out the severity of the problem, need among vulnerable populations, community’s capacity and willingness to act on the issue, ability to have a measurable impact on the issue, availability of hospital and community resources and so on. The measure that has been taken by some of African leaders was mealy `copy and paste due to lack of preparation.
The copy and paste syndrome for some of these leaders has never been for the public interest, especially poor and disadvantaged groups. To my opinion, the total lockdown strategy was viable for some developed countries with strong economic conditions and good infrastructures with a well-planned entry and exit strategy, because lifting lockdown for poor countries with no exit strategy in place will inevitably lead to large rebound effects, as the immunity of the population is estimated to be still very low because of the malnutrition, fear and inactive lifestyle during the lockdown.
Now the developed countries have in place the exit strategy, while some of East African countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda that imposed lockdown will probably end the lockdown without testing all of their people, isolation for at-risk people, and social distancing measures, the act which will lead to a peak in severe cases.
2. Violation of human rights
Police in different countries have used brutal measures and sometimes killed many innocent people in the name of fighting the novel COVID-19 pandemic. In Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa alone at least 30 people have been killed since lockdowns began in these countries.
3. Corruption
Experience from outbreak like Ebola, tsetse flies in Kenya, has shown that, in an emergency situation decision which is taken to rescue people’s life are accompanied with violation of procurement procedures, and misuse of power to make the decision that benefit corrupted leaders and their families. There is claim that, Kenya, Rwanda and other countries have requested the fund from local and International organization for their personal interest.
4. Ùn-necessary fear to the public
Most of developing countries have a common and serious problem that needs to be addressed rather than jumping into COVID-19 as the top agenda, we cannot say COVID-19 is not a threat, but it is not worse than the hunger in South Sudan and some parts of Uganda and Kenya, it is not worse than other diseases like Malaria, HIV, and CANCER which kills a big number of our people daily compared to COVID-19 .
Tanzania fight against COVID-19
President John Magufuli, unlike most other leaders, has a different approach in fighting this COVID-19 pandemic and the outcomes are better compared to other countries.
I assume he realized that it is unlikely that a vaccine will be found soon, and we will have to adapt ourselves to living with the virus. The everlasting lockdown for more than 55 million people will bring more death than what COVID-19 can do because it is difficult to manage and sustain, especially in places where the daily hustle of the informal sector or subsistence agriculture are the only means of survival.
The capacities to track, test and isolate for Tanzania is also a big challenge, Tanzania is bordered with eight countries with porous and poorly controlled borders and, in most cases, sustained national-level disease control is difficult. The lack of testing capacity makes it hard to know the full extent of transmission since it was announced.
Moreover, it is obvious that Tanzania health infrastructure is less effective compared to China, US, Italy, and the UK in terms of the number of hospital beds and ventilators, doctors and nurses, diagnostics facilities and others all these countries are scrambling to contain the spread of the virus, with the death toll in thousands.
Knowing that the goal of lockdowns in most places is not to eliminate the virus but to accept the economic and social costs as a price worth paying in order to ‘flatten the curve’ of infection and protect healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. The only choice was to create strong public awareness, restriction on movement, curfews, shutting places of entertainment, banning large gatherings, creating effective communication, schools, and college lockdown, social distancing, eradicating fear to public and maintaining stability in the country.
With this approach, the partial lockdown has helped not only Tanzania but also other neighboring countries. Tanzania has been a hub to supply essentials goods through its borders. President Magufuli has ordered his team to make sure Tanzanian have enough food during and after this pandemic and allowed food from Tanzania to flow across borders to the neighboring countries
President Magufuli has emphasized digitalization by regulatory authorities, this has reduced face-to-face contact between regulatory authorities’ officials and the clients, it has also reduced time and cost for people and corruption. At the same time, the computerization of records helps in the more efficient use of scarce enforcement resources.
On the other hand, he has created critics by some of the opposition leaders for the use of traditional medicine to treat symptoms of COVID 19, using a partial lockdown approach, and allowing essentials goods to flow within Tanzania and across the border.
In the COVID-19 crisis so far, President Magufuli has been widely praised for displaying the decisive leadership so many hoped for when they cast their ballot for him in November 2020.
Customs and port operations have slowed in developed countries and stopped in some of the developing countries. It is evident that the total lockdown strategy in developing countries has done more bad than good in fighting this COVID-19 pandemic. There is already evidence that measures that have been taken by some of the leaders were not well planned and therefore violated human rights, stimulated corruption, created un-accountability, and unnecessary fear to the public.
1. Poor planning
We all know that, there are laid criteria for prioritizing health crisis, these include analyzing the magnitude of the problem, finding out the severity of the problem, need among vulnerable populations, community’s capacity and willingness to act on the issue, ability to have a measurable impact on the issue, availability of hospital and community resources and so on. The measure that has been taken by some of African leaders was mealy `copy and paste due to lack of preparation.
The copy and paste syndrome for some of these leaders has never been for the public interest, especially poor and disadvantaged groups. To my opinion, the total lockdown strategy was viable for some developed countries with strong economic conditions and good infrastructures with a well-planned entry and exit strategy, because lifting lockdown for poor countries with no exit strategy in place will inevitably lead to large rebound effects, as the immunity of the population is estimated to be still very low because of the malnutrition, fear and inactive lifestyle during the lockdown.
Now the developed countries have in place the exit strategy, while some of East African countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda that imposed lockdown will probably end the lockdown without testing all of their people, isolation for at-risk people, and social distancing measures, the act which will lead to a peak in severe cases.
2. Violation of human rights
Police in different countries have used brutal measures and sometimes killed many innocent people in the name of fighting the novel COVID-19 pandemic. In Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa alone at least 30 people have been killed since lockdowns began in these countries.
3. Corruption
Experience from outbreak like Ebola, tsetse flies in Kenya, has shown that, in an emergency situation decision which is taken to rescue people’s life are accompanied with violation of procurement procedures, and misuse of power to make the decision that benefit corrupted leaders and their families. There is claim that, Kenya, Rwanda and other countries have requested the fund from local and International organization for their personal interest.
4. Ùn-necessary fear to the public
Most of developing countries have a common and serious problem that needs to be addressed rather than jumping into COVID-19 as the top agenda, we cannot say COVID-19 is not a threat, but it is not worse than the hunger in South Sudan and some parts of Uganda and Kenya, it is not worse than other diseases like Malaria, HIV, and CANCER which kills a big number of our people daily compared to COVID-19 .
Tanzania fight against COVID-19
President John Magufuli, unlike most other leaders, has a different approach in fighting this COVID-19 pandemic and the outcomes are better compared to other countries.
I assume he realized that it is unlikely that a vaccine will be found soon, and we will have to adapt ourselves to living with the virus. The everlasting lockdown for more than 55 million people will bring more death than what COVID-19 can do because it is difficult to manage and sustain, especially in places where the daily hustle of the informal sector or subsistence agriculture are the only means of survival.
The capacities to track, test and isolate for Tanzania is also a big challenge, Tanzania is bordered with eight countries with porous and poorly controlled borders and, in most cases, sustained national-level disease control is difficult. The lack of testing capacity makes it hard to know the full extent of transmission since it was announced.
Moreover, it is obvious that Tanzania health infrastructure is less effective compared to China, US, Italy, and the UK in terms of the number of hospital beds and ventilators, doctors and nurses, diagnostics facilities and others all these countries are scrambling to contain the spread of the virus, with the death toll in thousands.
Knowing that the goal of lockdowns in most places is not to eliminate the virus but to accept the economic and social costs as a price worth paying in order to ‘flatten the curve’ of infection and protect healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. The only choice was to create strong public awareness, restriction on movement, curfews, shutting places of entertainment, banning large gatherings, creating effective communication, schools, and college lockdown, social distancing, eradicating fear to public and maintaining stability in the country.
With this approach, the partial lockdown has helped not only Tanzania but also other neighboring countries. Tanzania has been a hub to supply essentials goods through its borders. President Magufuli has ordered his team to make sure Tanzanian have enough food during and after this pandemic and allowed food from Tanzania to flow across borders to the neighboring countries
President Magufuli has emphasized digitalization by regulatory authorities, this has reduced face-to-face contact between regulatory authorities’ officials and the clients, it has also reduced time and cost for people and corruption. At the same time, the computerization of records helps in the more efficient use of scarce enforcement resources.
On the other hand, he has created critics by some of the opposition leaders for the use of traditional medicine to treat symptoms of COVID 19, using a partial lockdown approach, and allowing essentials goods to flow within Tanzania and across the border.
In the COVID-19 crisis so far, President Magufuli has been widely praised for displaying the decisive leadership so many hoped for when they cast their ballot for him in November 2020.