BY FOCUS MAGANGA
To get to where we are with HIV/AIDS pandemic, African countries and other developing countries took time to respond to reports of the emergence of the pandemic. While developed countries responded swiftly and used effective public health measures to contain the virus, African leaders organised prayers to ask heavens to make the pandemic disappear. People fasted and prayed. And the citizens didn’t even help.
We wasted time with our superstitious behaviors until HIV penetrated into all corridors of our countries. Today, the sub-saharan Africa is the most hit region of HIV. It accounts for over 60 percent of global burden of HIV/AIDS and over 70 percent of all deaths from HIV/AIDS.
In case, you might have forgotten, its now over one week since the new AG told the Presidential taskforce on covid-19 to put aside restrictive and preventive measures of the disease waiting for court case. As we speak, parties are still being conducted, weddings are going as normal, churches are gathering as usual. And after a month we will get to a point where even mentioning it is as scary as death itself. We will put our hands around our waists and wonder if there is indeed God up in heaven.
The disease is different, but the tale is very familiar. And before you cast stones at me, let me say I am a believer. A devoted Christian. And I believe in God’s miracles. But hey, we are talking about health of population here. And this is where we need scientifically proven preventive measures. If you don’t put them in place, don’t blame it on God. Importantly, I am not asking for a lockdown here. And what the co-chair of covid-19 suggested was not a lockdown.
Good people, our health education is very low in this country. It is low among even the educated population. And inevitably, the best we can do is to reinforce measures that will bind the way of life, because people will not do them if they are not imposed. The same applies to road traffic accidents.
Here we think a road accident is the ‘will of God’. Our friends put in measures to prevent them. Today, the low and middle income countries account for 90 percent of all road traffic deaths in the globe. And Africa has the highest road traffic fatality rate of 26.6 people per 100 000 deaths. But in Malawi, it is even worse.
We have a road fatality rate of 35 people per 100 000. In the period 2008-12, we had 11, 467 road traffic collisions. To put it into perspective, road accidents are a serious issue of public health concern taking more lives daily than the aggregate of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and Malaria.
