Many Zimbabweans courting Covid-19

Stephen Mpofu
Zimbabweans “fed-up” of the Government’s measures such as wearing masks and social distancing to protect them and others from the deadly Covid-19 are courting death, a medical doctor warned this week.

For instance, complete strangers stood dejectedly in queues in business centres in the city, and no doubt elsewhere as well, with no regard whatsoever to social distancing, as directed in regulations to curb the spread of the virus, a doctor from Mpilo Central Hospital, who preferred anonymity, charged, adding: “But the coronavirus that they risk contracting from people they get into contact with kills.”

Churches in Bulawayo complained a fortnight ago against shebeens and house parties taking place in the city saying that these carnal joy events were a potential risk in the spread of the deadly virus as participants came into close contact with one another.

Implied in the complaint was a need for the Government to move in and stop the events in point until such a time that the coronavirus crisis was over, since beer consumed at such events and others reduced people’s immunity to Covid-19, according to the World Health Organisation.

The doctor’s complaint coincided with a reminder by the Environmental Management Agency (Ema) to Zimbabweans on the proper disposal of face masks and gloves worn by both the public and health workers in the fight against Covid-19, especially considering that the first Friday of each month, as yesterday was in September, a national clean-up day of our environment.

Ema’s Communications Officer Ms Joice Chapungu repeated her organisation’s National Covid-19 Response Guide which says: “Used gloves and face masks (non-re-usable type) litter the environment and have the potential to spread Covid-19, dispose of them properly both at household and institutional levels. Wash your used face masks and gloves with soap for 20 seconds or sanitise them with soap for 20 seconds or sanitise and then cut them into pieces to prevent re-use and disinfect at every step of the collection and disposal process.”

The doctor cited above in this discourse warned that the virus lasts a week on contaminated objects or surfaces, and stated that a vagabond was known to have died in Bulawayo after foraging for something to eat in a dustbin, suggesting that the waste in question had been improperly disposed of.

The Ema Communications Officer said that in rural areas face masks could be disposed of in pit latrines and in Blair toilets where they were not likely to contaminate water sources for domestic purposes.

This writer believes that there is a need for communicating the above information through indigenous languages in rural areas where the majority of Zimbabweans live and where not most people possess radios or television sets or newspapers written in local languages circulate will educate those not conversant with the English Language mostly used in urban areas about the importance of wearing and disposing of masks, for instance as a way of protecting them from the coronavirus which continues to spread, infecting millions of people across the world and leaving countless numbers dead as the onslaught continues.

With schools opening shortly, leaflets printed in local languages may be distributed through schools for pupils to take home to their parents as a way of raising awareness about the danger posed by the coronavirus in point.

Also, as devolution gets underway and gains momentum, rural communities should be saturated with information of a developmental nature so that our people may romp out and away from the political and economic strait jackets into which western imperialists restricted them during the foreigners’ dominion in the colonial era — and to which with their regime change machinations those without knees wish to restore — and into a brave new future with tails raised, like milk – drunk calves in lush, green pastures.