OP-ED: Has Uganda’s government done enough to fight coronavirus or is it ‘killing’ Ugandans deliberately??!

Lydiah Namayengo 

COVID19 as popularly called, is a Novel Corona Virus Disease that began in October – December 2019 in Wuhan City, Proben province in China.

The Novel Corona Virus is a new strain that was not previously recognised in humans. It causes diseases in mammals and birds and later spreads to people as a spill over event.

It has surpassed the death toll of SARS in weeks and spreads faster though the death rate is slower where by only 18% of its cases are severe and critical especially among the older people and immuno-compromised individuals like those with Diabetes, Cancer, HIV, TB, Blood pressure, Hypertension and other chronic diseases: while 82 %of its cases usually have symptoms that are relatively mild and not threatening.

Origin of Corona Virus:-
Corona Virus is a virus that comes from a group of viruses that cause sicknesses like the common cold, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), SARS, Marburg, Rabies, Ebolla, Nipah and Hedra Viruses: some of which are contagious like measles while others are less contagious.

It’s a virus that is specifically common among animal species like bat’s and camels.

COVID19 came from bats. Bat’s are hosts of many viruses although they don’t die from any disease so those viruses affect humans/people and animals while others affect animals alone.

So COVID19 was spread by viruses that are spread to both animals and people and its now spreading from person to person which can happen in a continuum or continuously.

Patients in Wuhan City in China where the virus started from had a large link to large sea food and animal market suggesting that the Virus came from the animals.

Dr Robin Crook, (2011) in his book Contagion also operationalized in a medical thriller which dramatically portrays how the disease can spread asserts that, when civilization continued to spread and expand, birds like bats got displaced.

So bats which were infected with the virus then ate bananas and flied to a piggery where they dropped a banana piece, then the pigs ate the banana pieces and there after some of the pigs are taken to the restaurant.

At the restaurant, the pig was handled by the Chef who then touched inside of the pig’s mouth when putting spices, then wipped his hands on the apron and shaked his hands with the waiter and customers who the following day developed cough and flue but flied back to their families in the US and other countries: and spread the Corona virus to their kids who eventually spread it to other family members and friends who started the chain events which caused a world wide pandemic that we are experiencing today.

Signs and Symptoms of COVID19:-
COVID19 is seen through (I) coughing (dry cough) where respiratory droplets produced by an infected person are passed on to others: (ii) Sneezing out in hands and on surfaces without use of handkerchief and mask to to cover the flue that later spreads as droplets to other people or even (iii) someone touches a surface where sneezes of the flue are and touches his mouth or nose or eyes that take in the Virus directly to the respiratory system.

(iv) Fever, (v) Headache, (vi) Difficulty in Breathing, (vii) wheezing that could lead to pneumonia in both lungs that enter the immune system.

How does COVID19 affect the body?
Corona Virus is fed on protein sparks, the envelope that forms the surface of its genetic material.

It enters the body and affects the red cell that is used as the machinery that inturn creates copies of themselves.

It has three phases of attack that are somehow similar to SARS though very severe:-(1)Viral Replication as Virus multiplies, (2) Hyper reactivity of immune system & (3) Pulmonary destruction that makes the lungs die out and u stop breathing or die.

Where does it affect most?
It mostly affects two types of cells in the Lungs:-

[i] Mucus cells which keeps your lungs from dieing out and protects them from pathogens &

[ii] Cilia cells that beat the mucus towards the exterior of your body clearing debris including viruses from your lungs.

Cilia cells are the preferred host of Corona Virus like how it was in SARS. So it affects these cells, and when these cells die out, they slough into your airways filling them with debris and fluid that prevents u from breathing normally.

How does COVID19 lead to DEATH ?
When the Virus enters the body and u develop the symptoms above, the immune system recognizes the virus and it becomes inflamed.

The immune system then over reacts leading to the damage of healthy tissues.

More cells then die and slough off into the lungs further clogging and worsening the pneumonia that u contracted in symptoms.

As the damage to the Lungs increases, stage three begins potentially leading to respiratory failure thus getting Permanent Lung DAMAGE or DEATH.

If a patient has Permanent Lung Damage, this with inflammation makes alveoli(air sacs) fail to help the Lungs replace Carbon dioxide with Oxygen, thereby increasing fluid leakage in the lungs.

That decreases the Lung’s ability to oxygenated blood thereby leading to #MultipleOrganFailure that leads to DEATH.

HOW DO WE PREVENT #COVID19?
-Practise regular hand washing with soap.
-Avoid crowded places (social distancing).
-Avoid contact with any one sneezing or coughing
-Maintain a distance when talking to anyone
-Stay at home & avoid crowded places of more than five people.
-Avoid contact with animals and wash hands immediately after contacting them
-Thoroughly cook meat and eggs before consumption.
-Cover your nose and mouth thoroughly while coughing and sneezing or in a place with many people.
-Always do exercises with family once or thrice a day.
-Do not travel un necessarily, only travel to work if u can’t work from home.

HAS GOVERNMENT DONE ENOUGH TO Prevent & HANDLE #COVID19?

Information accessibility and Affordability:-
Government has tried to send out messages on TV and radio stations about how to prevent #COVID19 but unfortunately these messages have only reached 25%of Uganda’s population that can afford a radio and to pay TV subscription per month, so what happens to the 75% typical majority Ugandans in the villages and out skirts who can’t afford a TV, radio, or smart phone, how have u communicated to them to create awareness about prevention,
or have u just decided to deliberately kill them yourself by not providing any measures for them?

In your communication as Fountain of Honor, u have continuously emphasised this information in English (and Lunyakole a little bit) in a country where over majority of our people do not understand English.

so what measures have u put in place to ensure translation of these messages in local languages as well as your State of the Nation Address such that majority population can understand the depth of the effect of this disease or have u just decided to kill them deliberately yourself by using English alone?!

Self and Institutional Quarantine
In your address, u together with the Ministry of Health directed all Ugandans that had come from abroad after your second #COVID19 state address to undergo 14 days of self quarantine and then later institutional quarantine in selected Guest Houses, Inns and Hotels which they have followed but however: the staff in these hotels are not trained on how to handle epidemics like these neither have health workers been deployed at these quarantine places to observe standard operating procedures to avoid any infection in their, just incase, any of the people has the infection,

so by not giving direction, or even instructing the Ministry of Health to provide those health workers and facilities like masks, sanitizers, Personal protective gears in these Quarantine centres, aren’t u just deliberately killing Ugandans yourself?!

U directed all the people from abroad this month regardless of their social and economic class or political influence to undergo Quarantine, but unfortunately ministers, MPs, people from the first family, business men and all those influential people in this country or those with influential people they know have sneaked out all their friends, family and relatives under your know as well as your security either by use of #Corruption of the hotels or order from above:, and u plus the State House Anti Corruption Unit have done nothing yet u are very much aware that one person can continuously spread the disease to the entire population and end up killing most of the people,

so aren’t you just killing Ugandans deliberately yourself by not making any action yet security in Uganda especially CID plus other security organs in Uganda are one of the highly equipped and facilitated departments in this country that can thoroughly search for these people and provide immediate information,

or are they just established to fight against the opposition and also help u stay in power by protecting your Life Presidency project!?

Institutional Quarantines are being charged a lot of money between 4-5 million or 100 US Dollars a day (380,000/=) per day for their stay in Quarantine which is quiet very expensive compared to majority Ugandans who may have been students or went to work but are back when they are broke, have been deported or can not afford this fee for many reasons,

why then don’t we see government provide #Free #Quarantine services to some people who can’t afford to pay by getting a Supplementary budget from other Ministries and departments like State House that may not require to use that money now!?

So by providing a very expensive Institutional Quarantine, aren’t u the one killing Ugandans because they can’t afford it?!!

Education
Under your directive in your first address on #COVID19 u directed all levels of education to close from Pre- Primary to University and Higher Institutions of Learning which was a good move because they contain 15 million people and need to practise social distancing, but u never gave a way forward on what should be done for sustainability of the education curriculums of different levels and neither has the Ministry of Education done so!

God has embraced us with digital/new media which is social media plus traditional media like radio and TV stations that Institutions can utilise to post all the learning materials online through their websites or social media like Facebook and WhatsApp or even have specific programs on radio and TV where teachers and Lecturers appear to teach the learners such that they don’t miss out on any content on their syllabus or even institutions asking teachers to prepare learning materials and ask parents to come and pick them from school to take for their students to learn from home especially those in the villages who can’t access a smart phone TV or radio?!!

But of course, this requires u to temporarily abolish social media tax and also reduce on the taxes of the TV stations plus electricity /power such that Ugandans can fully access these subscriptions at a less cost that is affordable and fully available without any disconnections since people are at home and not working,

but you are playing a deaf ear to direct on what Next in education or failing to abolish the social media tax and reduce TV taxes, aren’t you then deliberately just killing us as Ugandans by destroying our children’s future?!!

Anxiety has also risen among the parents who had already completed their school fees for this term but have rather studied one month of a term due to lack of a direction on whether the children will just continue to study for another month to finish the 1st term content without paying again thereby not taking a holiday, or will they have a reduction on 2nd term cost when it resumes as second term and whether the first term content will be covered as second term as some parents wanted to ask a refund from the schools!!

The would be direction is to issue a directive as Head of State or through the Ministry of Education that if the #COVID19 crisis is effectively handled in the 32 days without panic, the children will study the remaining content at school for original time but rather take only a weekend or one week off as holiday such that they compensate the lost out time or even reduce on the normally third term long December holiday of two months to atleast one month such that children will still cover the required curriculum content.

But when u don’t give those directives to calm the parents and children’s anxiety, then aren’t you the one just deliberately killing Ugandans slowly by slowly?

Economy
It’s with no doubt that with the ban on markets, private schools, businesses, travel bans, bars, concerts, music shows, festivals etc that are all a source of income contributing taxes for the growth of the country ‘s GDP& GNP which is a good move to fight social distancing, automatically have a deep effect on the economy that it will most likely run into a recession or economic crisis.!

When government set out Vision 2040 as way of reviving the economy, it planned to have six National Development Plans, of which Uganda has just established the National Development Plan III that requires a diversified active economy to implement it successfully, but with the #COVID19 I doubt that will happen!! So what is the government ‘s plan in such economic crisis, that people are not working, business not operating, tourism at stake, employees have no salary, private companies not making profits,!??

Why can’t government put up measures to uphold this economy like:- {1} reduction of taxes on essential items like food and basics to allow people’s survival, {2} give tax holidays to small scale business owners, {3} avail soft loans for people in manufacturing to continue with production, {4} give subsidies to agricultural and other medium scale industry owners and operators, {5} advise employers to atleast pay their employees this month’s salary, suspend loan repayment to banks for atleast three months, {6} allow the Parliament to reallocate funds from some Ministries like Tourism, {7} Ministry of Defence that u had planned to use on fighting riots, & some state House budget u had planned to dish out in hand outs to the Youth and Opposition fighting against your dictatorship regime be used to give out basics to the people, if u do not do these, then aren’t you the one deliberately killing Ugandans yourself???!

Health
U seem to issue out clear health guidelines for people to stay at home and also get treatment as soon as possible but however you have not yet cared about which health facilities and hospitals u refer them too!! Uganda’s health care system is one of the highly ill equipped health care systems around the world that lacks gloves, water, electricity, drugs, health workers or those who exist are poorly paid, no nutritionists, no psychologists/counselors, no oxygen, no ICUs plus all other protective gears that they need to atleast handle emergencies.!!

As long as the government and Ministry of Health have not yet provided the necessary protective equipments like face masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, soap, hand washing facilities, testing equipment, provisional treatment for managing of the case incase they break out at different health centres and thorough training and equipping of all health workers with adequate knowledge to handle these cases of COVID19, Or even failure to increase their salary because their workload has now increased:- or even fail to provide adequate transport means for the health workers especially in public facilities and government hospitals since most of them do not have staff accommodation facilities at the hospital, and can’t even afford to own a private car yet the public transport has been suspended:-

So if u don’t do these, aren’t u now the one just deliberately killing us together with the government?!!

Enforcement
It’s still not yet clear on how the Presidential directives on avoiding #COVID19 will be handled, enforced and by who because its not yet clear whether its the Ministry of Health, Education, Police, Security or even Parliament or society at large.?!! It could be good for all the people responsible for reorganising and enforcement to be officially allocated, informed and engaged such that Uganda does not just have directives or orders but when they can’t be implemented!!

So if u can’t provide for enforcement, won’t Ugandans just continue dieing due to failure to uphold operations and implementation of directives from u and won’t u be deliberately killing them yourself?!

Travels
A ban on all flights to and from most countries has been put up as they have been suspended especially those in category 1 which unfortunately keeps changing every now and then but unfortunately government has failed to pronounce quarantine on all people entering the country nomatter what category the country u are coming from falls, because unbelievably, most countries are not declaring the right information about how many new cases, or deaths they have registered per day thereby giving false information that misleads the world, so why don’t we declare a quarantine on all people that come into the country including those driving trucks with cargo such that we can cut off any international transmission?!!

So by not declaring a total ban and a must or mandatory quarantine on all people nomatter what category your country falls, and the truck drivers for mandatory 14 days, aren’t you just deliberately killing us yourself??!

Local transmissions with in Uganda have also began to occur where cases have been discovered in kibuli, Zombo, Adjumani etc but not enough measures have been put in place as People are squeezed up in small places, still loiter around even when government knows where they came from, hospitals handling them lack basics of epidemics to use, so by not handling these issues, aren’t you just deliberately killing us yourself???

Quarantine centres have also been fully congested with many people at the same time that exposes those people to danger, people who are supposed to be in isolation but have turned out to be like on a parade in a hotel and without any protection, can’t we improvise other public centres for quarantine!?

Why don’t we as country or government utilize its public schools that are now in holiday to work as isolation centres to quarantine people which have more space and facilities for protection and just provide a descent meal on a subsidised price with tight security to ensure that all people do not escape to ensure that we totally protect ourselves?!!

If u don’t do those to quarantine all people who come in nomatter which country category u come from, aren’t u just deliberately killing our people yourself?!!

Security
Every financial year’s National Budget, security is one of those sectors that are highly facilitated which is the same case this financial year 2019/2020, but unfortunately u have not mentioned security or its role in fighting against COVID19 in any of your recent address to the nation, yet they would have been very key and handy in ensuring that no one escapes from or misses engaging in the quarantine:

we have just seen them try to close bars, pubs and other public places thereby making themselves useful, but can we see Ministries and Agencies liase with the National COVID19 Task force to communicate effectively on how they will coordinate these roles and restore sanity in Uganda such that we can for once have a coordinated government rather than having a mess where everyone does what they want and we also as a state avoid working like in a panicky mode?!!

If you don’t do these, then aren’t u just deliberately killing Ugandans yourself?!!!

U have not in all your State of the Nation address on COVID-19 mentioned anything about the having the Prisons with inmates who are highly congested with no isolation facilities, so when one prisoners gets infected with the virus, what happens, do they stay in and infect all the others because they are prisoners, do we have health workers specifically attached to all prisons in Uganda to handle all the emergencies? Or are just waiting for deaths to start to occur, then we act in panic?!

How about police cells that sometimes keep people even beyond the mandatory 48 hours even when they are highly congested, so who handles emergency health cases at police stations,?

When u don’t give directions on the prison and police cells, then aren’t you just deliberately killing Ugandans yourself?!!

I call upon all Ugandans to #StaySafe to #AvoidCOVID-19 by following all the World Health Organization, Ministry of Health and Presidential guidelines because its a very deadly disease and they should prepare for the worst scenarios to come anytime!

I call upon health workers to be very cautious while handling emergencies because their Safety first evenin the midst of #CountryBeforeSelf because most patients need u alive to treat them, remember a dead person can not treat the alive people.!

I call upon Parliament of Uganda to hold a special Parliamentary Sitting to make amendments in some laws to provide provisions to economically stabilise the country especially in regards to the financial needs of its people like the one of National Social Security Fund such that Ugandans can access their savings to a tune of 40% because when saving lives, nothing is impossible!!

I call upon the commercial banks to halt the interests put on the loans as well as give public a three months waiver on loan repayment to allow the economy first stabilise and return to normal. I also encourage them to have diversified banking services as much as they can like digital banking, mobile banking and online banking, as well as stable systems to allow ATM.