Prime
Give Covid victims psycho-social help
What you need to know:
- The issue: Misinformation
- Our view: Leaders need to move quickly and alley misinformed fears of the residents that the viral disease is curable when victims offer sacrifices to their gods. These residents also need to be quickly disabused of this misguided notion that Covid-19 patients are being punished for their sins.
Reports that cultural myths are fueling the spread of Covid-19 infections in Pallisa District (Daily Monitor, July 6), should be dealt with urgently. Left unattended, this misinformation could aid the viral disease spiral and explode. Already, Palllisa District has registered 262 cases of infections and four deaths.
The report by healthcare workers that some patients hit by Covid-19 and under home-based care have now developed mental problems due to lack of psycho-social service from family memebers, is grave. The leaders in the district need to move quickly and alley misinformed fears of the residents that the viral disease is curable when victims offer sacrifices to their gods. These residents also need to be quickly disabused of this misguided notion that Covid-19 patients are being punished for their sins.
The residents need to be educated to know that Covid-19 spreads quickly from person to person through infected droplets by sneezing or coughing or by contact with contaminated surfaces. Only such messages may help reduce or eliminate reported crowding by both children and adults that still occurs in some local trading centres such as Petete.
This would also avoid the current unhealthy practices of some patients being locked up in some homes, and the residents threatening or beating up innocent health workers as they conduct scientific burials of Covid-19 victims.
All this misinformation demonstrates that these areas seem to live outside the country’s lockdown measures, forcing some stakeholders to propose drastic measures. But the directive to Butebo RDC Emmy Mitala by Science, Technology and Innovations minister in the Office of the President, Dr Monica Musenero, to beat up the residents who defy the presidential directives on SOPs, while desperate, is not any more helpful.
Neither are the assurances by Deputy RDC Magidu Dhikusoka that those harassing frontline medical workers be arrested. The best option would be to educate the residents about the disease, its less and common symptoms of aches and pains, sore throat, diarrhea, conjunctivitis, headache, fever, dry cough, and tiredness, and mode of spread, plus the SOPs to help stop the spread of the killer disease.
In sum, the announcement by Kibale MP Richard Oseku that together with area MPs, they have stepped in and joined the district taskforce to spread the gospel of prevention and fund the fight against Covid-19 is commendable. This is a great move that will go a long way to help cut down the spread of the viral disease in Pallisa District.
