How Coronavirus data on African Americans matters to Africa most

Courtesy: The Economist

In April this year, a report on Covid-19 and American ethnicities revealed that African-Americans are disproportionately affected by the virus. 

According to Mindy Thompson Fullilove, professor of urban policy and health at The New School in New York, "Epidemics follow social fractures. If you have a society that is fractured, or fracturing, you know that's where the disease is going to."

The beginning of the pandemic signalled the beginning of an avalanche of misinformation about the virus, fueling further spread of the virus. For example the claim that the black race does not experience equal pain levels as caucasians or that melanin offers some resistance to coronavirus.

According to a study this notion was surprisingly expressed even by people who had some medical training and went on to inform their medical judgements. It is a notion that may have played on at the beginning of the Covid pandemic more widely until it became clear that the virus affected both races randomly and without a clear bias for susceptibility.

In short, the unequal effects of Covid-19 are not caused by race, but instead income inequality. Pandemics don’t spread evenly in a fractured society.

It is public knowledge how wide the gap between the rich and the poor is in Kenya. Here, poverty levels scale the 70% mark (UNDP-2018), especially in remote & arid places.

The situation in Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest slum, for instance, is one characterized by struggles, aspirations, poverty and most times helplessness.

A typical household survives on less than a dollar a day, despite working odd and menial jobs, a plight made worse by rising unemployment cases in the East African state.

While a majority of women rely on hand-washing clothes for Nairobi’s middle class, their male counterparts work as casual laborers at construction sites (mjengo) by day and guards by night.

For many of them, the added cost of masks, sanitizers and running water is not nearly as important as their daily bread. A good number would rather buy food for their children than to have them ‘sleep hungry’ but with sanitized hands.

The mere thought of physical distancing as a measure to curb the spread of Coronavirus is glaringly ridiculous in the ghettos. 

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe flanked by colleagues during a Covid19 briefing. Getty Images

Times like these are 'not normal,' says Mutahi Kagwe (CS Health - Kenya), we cannot continue normally; we cannot continue jostling with fellow passengers at bus terminal for in doing so, we, might be squeezing ourselves to coronavirus.- but that is just what happens when you have to board public transport busses (matatus).

What many refer to as a house, is a single room covered all around by corrugated iron sheets and occupied by a family of three to four children, on most occasions the extended family share the flooring space at night for sleep.

There are little to no private facilities and the many public ones that are available are either run down or charge a cost too high for the majority. This explains the reason behind open defecation and the flying-toilet experience often said in jest, yet a public sanitation concern.

Despite public and private sector sanitation efforts, poor hygiene continues to be a cause of many diseases such as cholera in slums such as Kariobangi, Mukuru and Kibera.

Just in the month of May alone, 13 people have died from cholera while hundreds of others were infected in Northern Kenya.

Regulations require a 3-layered fabric mask, worn in all public spaces, yet most slum dwellers can no longer afford 3-square meals. With many others laid off work, the most they can do is wish the virus away.

There is an urgent need for quality healthcare in Kenya and the rest of Africa. A need to acquire more lifesaving equipment such as ventilators and to further increase the number of trained health professionals who can assist during these Covid times without which the rise in Covid-19 cases is assured.

But there is hope. This pandemic presents a whole lot of opportunities – for the government, entrepreneurs and those who wish to make lemonade out of this abundance of lemons.

This is the time African governments must realize that home-grown solutions work. Masks, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and ventilators must not always be imported, there are many brilliant minds within, like Avido or Grevy’s Zebra Trust who can make them to the required specification.

It is a time to bridge the social and economic divide by re-engineering the economy and harnessing the opportunities made possible by technology, research and biomedical studies,

An opportunity have every student taught in at least one skill or craft that he or she can make income of, only then will we have an economically sound continent that can provide and weather pandemics that are to come even post-Covid 19.