Do we clap for Ghana... Yet?

Before the announcement of the first two cases in Ghana, I was fearful, convinced that Ghana was going to be like Italy, with hundreds dying each day.

In my mind's eye, I foresaw our streets strewn with corpses, with morgues overstretched in normal times, buckling under the strain of deaths from COVID-19.

I relaxed when President Akufo-Addo addressed us. I relaxed some more when I listened to the measures he had taken with his men to stem the wave of the pandemic.

Indeed, the tenure of the addresses reassured me that this was a leader who did not want mass deaths through COVID-19.

It gave me the assurance that all was giong to be done to put human lives first in the fight.

What has been also reassuring has been the periodic information given on our case count and fatalities.

I remember at one press briefing, the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, stressing that Ghana's strategy with the fight was to actively seek out those with possible infections.

The directive to Ghanaians, who suspected they had the infection, to call dedicated lines for a team to come to them to either take samples to confirm or take them to a facility, if the symptoms were serious, was also comforting for me.

It meant that if a person was really infected, he or she would not be able to spread the disease, as he or she would be at home, perhaps advised to isolate, while samples were taken to confirm.

If the person was really infected, then the team would take him or her in the ambulance, with all the containment measures, to the designated health facility for treatment.
As he explained, the plan was not to get all massing up at health facilities, but structured in taking in those infected and doing the needful for their survival.

Doctors at the frontline of the fight have also been reassuring and humane.

They expressed their fears at the beginning, when the first cases were noted.

They expressed the strain at their around the clock attendance of COVID-19 patients, they also keep repeating their commitment to the sick.

They have asked Ghanaians to take seriously the advice on personal hygiene and social distancing, so that we do not present en mass and completely wear out those who are to nurse us back to health, in case we get infected.

I believe the ball is in the court of each individual now.

We all have to adhere to the dos and don'ts in order not to get the disease.

In adhering to the advice, Ghanaians, particularly the less privileged, who may not have BBC and CNN to watch what is happening abroad, should be shown footages of the death of people in other countries through COVID-19.

Our institutions of civic education must sensitise, with images of the deaths of patients in Europe and the US, for the import of the pandemic to be understood.

Messages by the World Health Organisation (WHO) must be localised. In a culture where the use of tissues are now catching on, with people using it merely at functions where food is served, how do we talk about spitting in tissues and disposing of it?

In a culture where we indiscriminately litter with every thrash in hand, are we not going to re-infect ourselves with the indiscriminate littering of tissues we have spat in?

In a culture where we spit anywhere and anyhow, should that also not be the focus of sensitisation campaigns?

Also, when all are advised to keep a distance of six feet apart from each other, how is that in practical terms?

Is it the length of a sprinter or urvan trotro? Is it an arm's length?

These must be in understandable vernacular for all.

I believe we must all clap for Ghana, but we must up our game as institutions and individuals to complement what our government is doing.

Writer's E-mail caroline.boateng@graphic.com