Listening to President Adama Barrow on the Gambia’s Coronavirus response, I grew nervous.
I agree that the Gambia has measures in place for contact tracing and testing, but we need to do more. All borders including the airport, as well as the seaport, must be closed and not allow any flights from Europe and the US to the Gambia.
How do we know someone tests positive if that person did not go to the hospital given the state of our facilities and the reach of medical facilities?
Coronavirus now in The Gambia If you traveled from that plane with the patient, get tested before you infect family, and the situation gets out of control. Probably, the infection has already started.
Patient- fellow-passengers- airline attendants-taxi at the airport-family of patient-kids-kids go to school-teachers-parents ( total disaster). Experts in the US estimate the virus will kill 170 million people.
The United States has announced $700billion in quantitative easing and cuts in interest rates. Where are our econometricians? We cannot afford to print money like the United States, but we have options to prevent a current and looming meltdown.
However, I see nothing but the defense of the Dalasi and the economy. We have problems, and it is about to get “badder.” I am worried!
We are probably more conversant with coronavirus pandemic that has infected only one person— much less killed — any Gambian on this soil.
Nevertheless, we are more likely to see the coronavirus on the front pages of the global media and as an item of the discussion by the citizens, compared to any other epidemic in the Gambia.
Nevertheless, looking at the Gambia through the lens of the coronavirus pandemic, we would say it has exposed, yet again, our tendency to pay less attention to tackling the diseases that regularly kill our people.
Every day, cancer, fever, cholera, and malaria kill poor and hapless Gambians — those who cannot afford to apply for a visa, much less buy a flight ticket — but they do not get the media coverage and severe policy intervention that they deserve.
We will hardly hear National Assembly members raise an issue of “urgent national importance” over cholera and cancer, malaria fever.
Let us hope that the coronavirus situation will open our eyes to the oft-ignored dire picture around us.
