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