4 Big Lessons To Be Learnt from the Covid19 Pandemic.

[Music]

uh

the 27th of february 2020

began like every other random day for me

i was still quietly in the meeting

somewhere when i received

a whatsapp message

we have confirmed our first case of

kovid

little did i know at that time that that

simple

whatsapp message was going to be my

baptism of

fire into what i now refer to as my

first

pandemic response experience

the last couple of months have been a

lot of things for me

my colleagues and indeed a lot of

nigerians

the sleepless nights the confusion the

frustration

the joy from having our loved ones

return from coveted isolation centers

the sadness from losing loved ones to

covet 19

the on and off depression

the sleepless nights the endless

meetings

the anxiety a lot of things

but the biggest parts for me would

always be the lessons

from this experience so i call this

the four biggest lessons we should all

learn

about public health from the kovy 19

pandemic

first lesson public health

is political

in public health we often say that the

field

is driven by

science and evidence and this is true

nobody can argue that

but is that really all that drives this

very important field

i think not

and for those of us who have either been

involved in this pandemic response

or who have followed the trajectory of

conversations

would probably by now understand the

extent to which

politics and political decisions

drive public health interventions

public health response public health

infrastructure

whether you’re talking about the

leadership itself

whether you’re talking about the

financing of public health

initiatives or response whatever it is

politics is a big driver

of whatever happens as far as public

health response

is concerned early on in nigeria we

saw the president inaugurate the

presidential task force

on covey 19 to provide both political

and strategic leadership for the

response

many of us who are involved in this

response can argue positively

that a large part of the success that we

have had

in the country to the

coverage response has been largely to

this political structure that was put in

place

early enough at the micro level we’ve

seen

governors exercise their political will

to ensure that

necessary infrastructure is available in

their states

whether you’re talking about

laboratories to diagnose

covid19 what are you talking about

covered isolation centers for clinical

management

one way or the other leaderships at the

state level have taken

some responsibility exercising their

political will to ensure that

things happen when they showed how they

should and for who they showed

so we must begin to

ask public health experts

but generally as a whole begin to

internalize and reflect

on the role that politics plays in

shaping public health response

if we must build back better post kobe

the second lesson is that public health

is local

local hair not necessarily restricting

or limiting to

geographical settings even though that

still applies

but local in the sense that

we unpack the bigger population

into smaller groups with

similar characteristics such as age

gender religion profession

because at the end of the day

messages even though they are the same

would always be interpreted by people

based on their circumstances at the time

and the environment that they find

themselves in

so the way a doctor would interpret the

same message might be different from the

way

farmer walking in his farms will

interpret it

the way a rich man might interpret a

message might be a bit different from

the way

that a former a homeless person would

interpret the same messaging

so if we are to communicate better in

future

we need to start to to learn

to customize public health messaging

public health interventions to fit

different groups of people in their

settings

within their spaces so that at the end

of the day we do not

end up leaving any group behind

the third lesson is that public health

is everything

not just health

due to the kobe pandemic we have seen

millions of jobs lost

millions of people have lost their

sources of livelihoods due to the

multiple global lockdowns

businesses have gone bankrupt

many have been shut down

some may rebuild some may not

in the early days of the pandemic in

nigeria we have the vice president of

nigeria professor yemi

osinbajo project

that by december 2020

close to 39.4 million jobs

will be lost in nigeria

if that number does not die you

think for a minute about how many

eyeshadows

and have met how many ngozis and

makers how many toulouse and au pairs

how many celestinas

is 39.4 million

how many of that 39.4 million

are our mothers our brothers our sisters

our uncles

our friends our neighbors

think about the almost 50 million school

children who have been forced to stay at

home for almost

six months because our schools and our

institutions

are locked down

think about all of this within the

context

of a country where even before the

lockdown

unemployment rate was already at almost

34

and even among those who employed the

underemployment was

at about 19 according to the nigerian

bureau of statistics

in a context where a huge number of our

children were already out

of school in a context where

our educational infrastructure was

already as fragile as we had it

pre-covered

think about it for a minute

finally public health is everybody’s

business

for the first time in a very long time

because of the covey pandemic

we have a situation where everybody

is affected by the same thing

in this case covid19 infection

for the very first time in a long time a

lot of us are living through a situation

where

it doesn’t matter who you are whether

you’re rich or poor

whether you’re a pharma doctor whether

you’re a journalist a politician

whether you’re young or old whether

you’re a boy a girl

male or female nobody is immune

nobody is shielded

we’ve had presidents affected we’ve had

governors affected we’ve had farmers we

have

we’ve had doctors everybody

everywhere

even in places where we thought things

were a lot better even in the more

developed climbs

developed nations and under developed

nations alike everybody is

affected

nobody is immune nobody showed it

so if this does not make us

think about how much

anything public health is everybody’s

business i don’t know what else will

and as i end this talk today

i want to invite all of us

each one of us sit back and think for a

minute about the role

that we are playing to end this pandemic

are you making things better why are you

making them worse

thank you