Continued from Tuesday
Fola Adeola
We live in the tropics. COVID-19 or not, we need more infectious disease treatment capabilities. We must not take our eyes off Lassa fever, cholera, and the other diseases that were with us before COVID-19 came along, because they have not gone away. We need to train and adequately incentivise our health workers, and we need to bring a level of health awareness to our population. All of these things can be fast-tracked, not by building new white elephant healthcare projects, but by judiciously applying our limited resources to making whole the abandoned or incomplete facilities located in high-density areas where they will be utilised, COVID-19 or not. We can continue to upgrade the knowledge of hospital staff, and teach them to recognise disease presentation. We can inject funding into the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries and start to produce more frequently used drugs/items locally. God knows, we need the jobs!
Beyond healthcare infrastructure and supplies, we need to ensure that we are able to prioritise steady power to hospitals and these healthcare manufacturers, particularly during healthcare crises. We must have state and national health emergency protocols and triggers. We must plan for the possibility of another, maybe more than one, lockdown. We must keep the conversation with citizens going, so that they are carried along and cooperative, if we need to return to sheltering in place down the line. We must let them know that their behaviour as we return to daytime activity will determine whether or not we can continue to service the economy, and live. We must learn lessons from this first fire drill and avert, not prepare for worse.
Ideally, we should have a healthcare reform budget and implementation tracker, alongside our COVID-19 tracker – in plain sight, for all to see. It would be best if we could account for funds received and utilised sums, openly and transparently. It would be great if the public could see in real time, what the designated projects are, and cheer along as they are completed. It would be good if the private sector can see what can be done to bridge funding gaps through cash and in-kind donations. We are told that the funds received in the first round of COVID -19 donations will be eligible for tax credits. It would be good if a Healthcare Infrastructure and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme could be considered, as an extension of this. But let’s not let the best become the enemy of the good. It would be sufficient if we started simply by upgrading a few of the teaching hospitals and taking over their uncompleted projects.
While healthcare reform addresses treatment, prevention is better, and it is a communal responsibility. We must take what we know about how the disease spreads, and modify the way we live with and in spite of it. Communication campaigns, as fervent as those we see during elections, and as star-studded as the ones we have seen in the last few weeks, are required now for an even nobler purpose. We must help everyday people understand that each of us holds the other’s health in our hands. We have told employers that work can resume, we must also provide clear industry guidelines on how that work should proceed. The guidelines must be practical and pragmatic. They cannot crush the cost structures of the businesses they are designed to protect, but they cannot be so discretionary, that business-owners’ short-cuts lead to workplace outbreaks. We have asked citizens to mask up, we must tell them the masks need to be washed daily, or risk the onslaught of other diseases. We will eventually ask children to return to school; how will we manage disease spread in already crowded classrooms. Masks are uncomfortable, how do we get children to keep them on? What will we do about our dirty cash problem, that was here long before COVID-19? What will our “merrymaking nation” lives look like without parties? How will we ensure that they don’t move indoors, go “underground,” and crowd homes rather than event centres?
We must also come to terms with some of the deeper implications of this “redesigned” life. Other than large corporates, most businesses cannot afford to pay staff when they are not earning money. Many will not survive. In some cases, the month-long shutdown has already sealed their fates, others will limp along for a little while longer. For traders, dependent on regular aviation traffic to receive goods, their supply chains, lead time, buying costs, everything, will shift. Others have business models that simply cannot survive a “mask and distance” or curfew regime – restaurants, bars, hotels. What will happen to them? What happens to our event centres: will they be re-purposed and converted to other uses? What about the entire economy that is built around our merry-making: catering, cakes, clothing, makeup, musicians, photography, money-changers, parking “attendants”, what adjustments will they need to make? Are these restrictions here to stay? We must assume that they are, and prepare our people for significant disruptions and adjustments. Because human behaviour is elastic, the first hurdle ahead will be getting people to recognise and heed the need to shift. We can expect that people will first attempt to return to the status quo ante, or some variant thereof, and only retreat if they are unsuccessful or suffer harm.
We can shrug; after all, the problems will touch everyone. Why should some of us take Panadol for everybody’s headache? The answer is, “because we can”. Because we can put these newly unemployed people to work in a redesigned economy. Because we can invest in local production, and decrease our dependency on imports. Because we can do the unfashionable thing and finally shut our doors to anything but progress, without looking like fascists. Because we can find and weave together the silver linings in this haze of dark clouds into the fabric of a new society. Because we can ride the COVID action train to a different, better Nigeria. Because portfolio investors parading as FDI will flee, but if we, the owners of the economy, do the right things now, a path can be created towards welcoming real growth capital when the world is restored. And, frankly, because the alternative will engulf us all. Because if working parents lose their livelihoods, children will be pulled out of school, and ignorance will increase. Because this delicate balance of lives vs. livelihoods can only be managed if those who can join hands to create safe livelihoods for those whose ability to eke out an existence must be sacrificed for us all to live. Because hungry people will eventually take to the streets (the threat of this was palpable over the course of this lockdown), when opportunities to make an honest living suddenly disappeared. And because, in the new “balaclava nation” that we will occupy when we all “mask up,” faces will be obscured and only eyes – desperate eyes – will be last thing we see before the curtains fall. God forbid we let it come to that.
Concluded.
Adeola, OFR, mni is Chairman, FATE Foundation and Coordinator, FATE Philanthropy Coalition for COVID-19
END
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