Don’t forget folk in rural areas while waging war on the virus

Although town folk are being advised, sometimes quite flippantly, against travelling to their rural homes in the belief that the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) can’t reach them there, nothing could be further from the truth.

At the risk of sounding like a doomsayer, such a view could be very misplaced, and this for a number of reasons, the most pertinent being that the message on how to keep the pandemic at bay has not really trickled down to the grassroots the way it should.

And this is not due to a dearth of information; it is chiefly because many rural folk continue to believe the virus is “foreign” and only urban dwellers are vulnerable.

After all, they reason, although seven people have been identified as infected so far, no Kenyan has actually died.

The only problem is that there is no guarantee this state of affairs will continue indefinitely. Considering that many developed countries with strong public health systems have been floundering while trying to contain the virus, ours may be a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Why do I go on about rural areas? On a recent visit I paid to my home village, I discovered that the coronavirus has become some kind of sick joke to many rural folk.

They have heard of it, of course, for the news about it is all over the airwaves every day. They have been told to wash their hands frequently, but few of them have access to a regular supply of clean water, and they cannot really bring themselves to waste it on “non-essentials”.

As for sanitisers, these are luxuries they do not readily understand even if they can afford them. The fact that already, 259,000 people worldwide have been infected with the virus and 10,000 have died — after only three months — has barely registered in their minds. Nobody will tell them how to sneeze; they have done it openly all their lives without any ill effects. And when they cough, it is not something to visit a doctor for; they know it is the dust from the fork jembes they used to dig with.

This is not to suggest that all country folk are unreconstructed bumpkins; no, many of them are as afraid of the virus as everyone else and they know what they should do to avoid it.

But what happens when your mother or your favourite aunt extends her hand for a handshake, the only form of greeting she knows? You cannot hip-bump her; you extend yours and hope for the best.

But on a more serious note, it will be an uphill task to convince these folks about the need to take extra precautions in their relations with friends and acquaintances or the need to keep their distance.

Only very drastic measures will work and I would, without hesitation, recommend them. The big worry is that as the authorities mull a complete lockdown in urban areas, they seem to have forgotten about areas with low populations.

There, too, a lot more needs to be done even if it means locking up all bars and nightclubs as some enlightened governors have done, or even closing all churches and mosques and forcing believers to worship outdoors.

Hospitals and clinics in rural settings should be equipped with the amenities and qualified personnel to conduct tests at a moment’s notice. Also, isolation wards should be constructed as fast as possible. That will, for sure, be a very tall order for any government, but do we really have a choice?

Viruses know no boundaries. One of the problems that we face is that rural areas have literally become, to coin a phrase, a country of old men and women — and they are the most vulnerable to this virus. Not only are they prone to illnesses that inevitably come with age, their immunity levels are low. As a result, if the virus spreads, they will be particularly affected. Doesn’t this then mean that society should expend more energy and money on senior citizens even as they concentrate on urban populations?

In history, most pandemics started in congested cities but they rapidly spread to rural areas. A good example is the bubonic plague that broke out in Europe, Asia and North Africa in 1347. In three years, the so-called Black Death claimed 200 million lives and continued to recur as long as flea-infested rats were transported by ship from coast to coast carrying the bacteria that caused the highly infectious disease. In those days, there were no antibiotics, and so an infection was sure death.

Perhaps the closest the world has come to experience a viral attack this century was the HIV/Aids pandemic that erupted globally in 1981 and killed thousands, especially in Africa.

Since then, a cure for Aids has never been found, and if the coronavirus follows that trend, there is little hope of a cure any time soon. But if we follow the advice being given to us daily by the government, virologists and epidemiologists, it will be possible to minimise the number of infections and deaths.