Malawians need to continue observance of sanitation and hygiene habits life after COVID-19

Analysis by Duncan Mlanjira

Regular hand washing with soap; coughing and sneezing onto the elbow if one doesn’t have a handkerchief handy; staying at home when down with flu or other airborne diseases; not touching eyes, nose and mouth when hands haven’t been washed and avoiding unnecessary public handshakes, had been some measures that most Malawians recklessly ignored that usually led to ill-health.

These are some of the sanitation and hygiene measures that the new generation of Malawian learners in primary school study and are examined for — under the curriculum of Social Studies — while most of the older generation ignore these simple but very essential measures of keeping healthy.

There is need for Malawians to continue with observance of sanitation and hygiene habits life after the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the sensitization of keeping healthy should be as vigorous as has been through the COVID-19, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared as pandemic.

The COVID-19 has jerked most Malawians to the reality that this disease is an instant killer and when they were sensitised that the disease is at the same time very preventable by observing the above mention sanitation measures, the public have been adhering them.

Most service providers do not arrange to have hand washing stations at their premises for customers to have access to and suddenly, with this COVID-19 pandemic — and/or following the Government’s directive — most shops and offices have installed these stations at their entrances.

It is not difficult for Malawians to continue with this trend because soon after the directive to have hand washing stations at every shop, office and other public convenience service providing centres, some innovative entrepreneurs came up with various designs of building proper water bucket stations as well as sewing face masks for sale.

A Malawi News Agency (MANA) report highlights that Mangochi Community Technical College has developed a user-friendly hand washing device equipped with a hand-drying heater in a bid to fight the spread of COVID-19.

But can’t that be further designed so that Malawian public service providers, or even households, can buy and continue using life after COVID-19? The answer — yes, please, let’s inculcate the culture of observing sanitation and hygiene.

The MANA report done by Kondwani Magombo, says the device produced Mangochi Community Technical College is a steel stand station holding a bucket of water, a wash basin, soap on one side and a heater on the other, to be used for drying hands after the washing.

The heater is powered by electricity and is switched on manually by pressing one’s foot on a pedal placed on the ground just next to the steel stand.

The community college’s principal, Ronald Mbasa Mwawembe explained that they came up with the innovation as one of their contributions towards the preventive measures against spread of the virus through hand washing.

But in principle, this innovation can be produced in mass numbers — with further user-friendly variations — for future use life after COVID-19.

Most times, when Malawi as a country is hit by natural calamities — such as floods, droughts, cholera and others — life goes on and people in the communities affected never learn much.

In such instances of floods comes cholera — mostly because most communities do not observe sanitation and hygiene measures before and thereafter.

There are several pro-poor NGOs in Malawi that also deals with sanitation and hygiene matters such as WaterAid, Plan International Malawi, World Vision, Water for People, United Nations agencies such the UNICEF, WHO and many others, who have come to the fore and joined hands with all stakeholders in dealing with the COVID-19.

There is plenty of room for such organizations to add to their sensitization campaigns that the preventive measures should continue being practiced life after COVID-19.

Fifteen years ago, as reported by africanews.com, former American president George Bush is reported to have read a book on the Spanish influenza which inspired him to engage with top officials asking that the country should try to always prepare for a pandemic.

It is reported that a national plan drawn up at the time included among others: diagrams for a global early warning system; funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators.

The report by africanews.com quotes former a White House official as telling ABC News that the plan remained unused and resurfaced when COVID-19 arrived.

A video clip of Bush speaking at the National Institutes of Health in November 2005 has now resurfaced, in which he said:

“Leaders at every level of the government have the responsibility to confront dangers before they appear and engage the American people on the best course of action. It is vital that our national address and discuss the threat of pandemic flu now.

“There is no pandemic flu in our country or in the world at this time but if we wait for a pandemic to appear it will be too late to prepare and one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today.

“By preparing today, we can give our citizens some peace of mind knowing that our nation is ready to act at the first sign of danger. And that we have the plans in place to prevent and if necessary withstand and influence the pandemic.”

Nine years later, after Ebola outbreak that hit West Africa in 2014-2015 and is still active to date, President Barack Hussein Obama had said:

“The funding we are asking for is needed to keep strengthening our capacity here at home so we can respond to any future Ebola cases. 

“It is needed to help us partner with other countries to prevent and deal with future outbreaks and threats before they become epidemics.

“We were lucky with H1N1 that it did not prove to be more deadly. We can’t say we are lucky with Ebola because obviously it’s having a devastating effect in West Africa but it is not airborne in its transmission.

“They may and likely will come a time in which we have likely both an airborne disease that is deadly. And in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure — not just here at home but globally — that allows us to see it see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly.

“So that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish flu, crops up five years from now, or a decade from now, we’ve made the investment and we are further along to be able to catch it. It is a smart investment for us to make.” 

Before Obama, former Libyan leader, late Muammar Gaddafi, in his address to the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations in 2009 in New York — when he was chairperson of the African Union, had said that capitalist companies produce viruses so that they can generate and sell vaccinations in case of disease outbreaks.

“That is very shameful and poor ethics. Vaccinations and medicine should not be sold. Medicines should be free of charge and vaccinations given free to children, but capitalist companies produce the viruses and vaccinations and want to make a profit. 

“The entire world should strive to protect our people, create and manufacture vaccinations and give them free to children and women, and not profit by them. 

“All those items are on the agenda of the General Assembly, which has only to exercise that duty.”

What Gaddafi told the UN Assembly is the same that both Bush and Obama were trying to communicate that countries should strive to be ready for any epidemic and that before it gets the chance to penetrate, it should be contained easily.

For the case of Malawi, the COVID-19 is the golden opportunity to impress on the general public that these sanitation and hygiene measures — as simple as just regular hand washing — should be religiously practiced in life after this global crisis in order not to be caught off guard if it shall resurrect or come in another form.

After all, regular hand washing with soap; coughing and sneezing onto the elbow if one does not have a handkerchief handy; staying at home when down with flu or other airborne diseases; not touching eyes, nose and mouth when hands haven’t been washed and avoiding unnecessary public handshakes, are simple measures that when recklessly ignored usually lead to ill-health.