I am overwhelmed certainly, flabbergasted is the phrase that greatest describes my thoughts following a take a look at to Kumasi and beyond very last 7 days.
I was amazed that following all the schooling on COVID-19 about the previous few of months, a segment of our populace is still behaving like lifestyle is usual. The fatal pestilence in our midst, infecting individuals at a rapid amount and declaring lives, even now looks considerably absent for some of our persons. Why is these kinds of a lethal real truth, so challenging to acknowledge?
Business enterprise as typical
The actuality I encountered on my get absent from Accra to Ashanti Region by street is that in conditions of understanding the atrocious nature of the novel disorder, we are not all at par. For some individuals, in their mind’s eye, the pandemic is foreign, not still in town and so business proceeds as normal.
Wherever has all the schooling on the protocols for social distancing and carrying of facial area masks in public gone? I kept asking myself on the journey. Is it a issue of ignorance, not sufficient training, each or some thing else?
I had not moved for extra than a distance of three kilometres away from household since March when the initially scenario of coronavirus in the country was noted. I never imagined that on our roadways, lifetime was bubbly and carefree even with the uncertainties presented by the deadly virus.
The energetic human and vehicular website traffic specifically on the Ofankor–Pokuase street exactly where a key highway construction is in progress shocked me. Road hawkers were being at their peak and so were being active commuter buses. Despite the training on putting on of confront masks in public spaces, a person could depend only just one in five folks wearing a mask all the time.
The photo did not improve all over the journey to Kumasi and outside of. On the highway, wayside mechanics, foodstuff suppliers, bush meat sellers and other people have been all in business enterprise as usual method. No observance of COVID-19 protocols. How could this also move if adherence to the protocols that would control the virus is flouted with impunity?
Villages and townships
Passingthrough villages and townships on the Accra-Kumasi highway, youthful males relaxed less than trees actively playing draughts. It experienced rained greatly during the Sunday evening into that Monday. A ton of the streams along the route were stuffed up. Young children in some villages ended up leisurely washing in the streams. Ended up mothers and fathers not conscious of the monster with no discrimination in city?
Kumasi
My biggest shock was in Kumasi, the country’s next epicentre after Accra. It seemed to me that the claimed each day increases in the quantity of infected folks did not subject significantly as to trigger alterations in behaviours and attitudes. Far more concerns ended up filling my brain but no evident answers.
It did not make any difference the diversion I took, the streets of Kumasi was entire with chaotic actions of people today and automobiles. Additional stressing was the simple fact that incredibly couple individuals out there ended up wearing encounter masks. As for social distancing, it experienced been thrown to the puppies.
Persons sat leisurely in front of stores chatting. Dressmakers and their apprentices grouped together in their shops like in advance of. The similar was with hairdressing salons and barbering retailers. Preachers have been on the streets with their megaphones. At a location there was a group of gospel singers with a band in attendance doing their company as typical.
Observation
The obvious observation from my vacation was that coronavirus is imaginary to some. Persons are playing foolhardy and refusing to admit that COVID-19 is in this article in town and raging havoc with above 6,200 infections and dozens of fatalities in Ghana as at May possibly 21.
Above all, I felt the education and learning on the ferocious character of the ailment had not trickled by way of. We want regional belief formers to make use of all the indicates at their disposal to engage their communities. Community data units will have to be utilized. Gong-gong beaters will have to be introduced back at dawn and at sunset to drum home to communities that COVID-19 is proper at people’s doorstep.
We need to have Facts Solutions Department (ISD) to team up with the Countrywide Commission on Civic Education and learning (NCCE) to go deep down with the naked truths about COVID-19.
From the very little I noticed very last week, the pandemic is staying underrated, probably not properly understood. There is a seeming perception that it is significantly from us. It is time to shout it out convincingly that COVID-19 is now in city and in communities.
Writer’s e mail: vickywirekoandoh@yahoo.com
