Teach citizens how to take on virus

The Covid-19 pandemic and Kenyans’ reactions to it have raised several salient issues that touch on the management strategies the national and county governments need to deploy to stem the spread of the disease.

The issues include but are not limited to trust for leaders, lack of a vision and mission on the war against the virus, knowledge in group dynamics, public relations and the need to educate the masses in simple and clear language on the consequences of the virus continuing to smoulder in the country and region.

First, and most disturbing, is the apparent lack of trust among a small proportion of the population on the information emanating from the Ministry of Health.

In spite of the speeches and body language of Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe clearly betraying his agony and frustration when emphasising the need for compliance with the strategies to stop the pandemic, it is strange that one literally hears people say, and reads on social media, remarks like “the virus does not affect Africans” and “the youth are immune to the virus”. That means there still is a large number of people who do not trust the leadership of the ministry.

Were this medical calamity limited to Kenya or a section of the Kenyan population, one would be forgiven for being suspicious about the government.

But this is a global problem with casualties in excess of a quarter million people worldwide.

Why would Kenyans mistrust the ministry that provides scientific information meant to benefit them individually and their families and communities?

This unjustified apparent lack of trust could be reduced if trusted regional and county leaders — be they pastors, sheikhs or community elders — could be provided airtime on the vernacular radio and national television stations to articulate the same message from the CS in the language and style that would enhance trust in the information circulated.

The second issue is the language and strategy of communicating the daily updates by the CS.

A majority of Kenyans, I dare say, did not study mathematics beyond secondary school and even those who did so did not enjoy plotting graphs.

Having taught mathematics in high school, I know the statement that “We need to flatten the curve” is alien to most Kenyans.

We need a Kiswahili and vernacular translation to this terminology and ask the leaders proposed above to use it repeatedly in addition to explaining what needs to be done. Also, CS Kagwe should speak Kiswahili a bit more.

The third and crucial issue that we need to address is to articulate the worldwide and Kenyan vision and mission on the war against the virus.

To me, the vision is ‘Kenya without the coronavirus’ and the mission of every one of us “to fight the spread of the coronavirus”.

The Health ministry has emphasised more the strategies of achieving the mission and getting to the vision rather than highlighting the mission and vision more prominently.

However, in management theory, there are missions that fade with time. When one observes the increasing number of people in the streets of Nairobi and the agitation by some parents that schools be reopened, and yet official statistics clearly show the virus has been domesticated after being imported and the infection and fatality numbers are rising, one would be tempted to conclude that the above mission is beginning to fade.

We need to look for champions at the local level to articulate the mission in order to assist the CS to hype and psych the population to continuously work on the mission to stop the virus in its tracks.

Fourthly, there is the important matter of group dynamics. Residents of Eastleigh in Nairobi and those of Old Town in Mombasa form distinct groups on the basis of geography.

When groups like these are formed through a well-thought-out strategy to contain the virus, there are bound to emerge group leaders and agitators who will try to challenge the authority of the government by highlighting several conjured-up grievances and a few genuine ones to spice up their arguments.

With social media in place, these fellows could easily swing the opinion of the groups away from the noble intentions of the government.

This could be replicated as the disease spreads across the country. The grievances, as Eric Hoyle says in The Politics of School Management, could become “the unpredictable pebbles that derail the best-laid plans”. Bona fide community leaders ought to counter such propaganda.