Tanzania needs a solid and consistent Covid-19 strategy

Tanzania needs a solid and consistent Covid-19 strategy

ePresident Samia Suluhu Hassan’s commitment to establishing a professional task force to review the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is timely and laudable. As a country, we hope one of the committee’s outputs will be to draft a solid, clear and consistent Covid-19 strategy.

For over a year now, we have been battling Covid-19 without a clear strategy or command unit. This situation resulted in inconsistent messages issued by state bureaucrats, politicians and medical professionals, leading to confusion and at times dangerous misinformation. There were occasions were politicians and researchers bragged about the effectiveness of traditional herbs to cure Covid-19 patients and immunise people against the deadly virus without providing sufficient scientific evidence.

We need a Covid-19 strategy to save lives, rescue the economy, and protect our social and political ties as a nation and a member of the international community. President Hassan’s observation that we cannot pretend to be an island is accurate and laudable, and must inform our strategy and way forward.

Without a consistent and transparent Covid-19 strategy and publicly available mechanisms to contain the pandemic, we Tanzanians will lose more businesses, tourists, researchers and business conferences to countries that are perceived to be responding effectively and following internationally accepted standards and procedures.

The strategy must establish mini committees – sectoral committees to ensure that every sector of the economy and social fabric of our country has an effective team to provide guidance to ensure the most effective response.

As President Hassan stated, the solution to Covid-19 is neither in continued denial nor cheap politics that Covid-19 does not exist, but a science-informed strategy and adoption of best practices and research-informed international standards, including vaccination, wearing of masks, social distancing and the washing of hands.

We hope the President’s committee will include people from diverse backgrounds and training, covering major sectors of the economy, society and politics. We must understand that even though Covid-19 is a public health issue, public health itself is a social good.

Therefore, there is no way a government can deal with Covid-19 alone. Instead, a successful strategy needs joint efforts between individuals, civil society and government to craft and fully implement it. Lessons from West and Central Africa show that it is the close partnership between communities and local government, including city authorities, that helped these countries conquer Ebola in late 2015.

The government needs the support of other actors because when it comes to diseases in our African societies, people tend to listen to many different authorities and actors. Beyond their governments, Tanzanians listen to medical doctors, traditional healers, religious leaders and herbalists. It is on this basis announcements made by the Catholic and Lutheran churches in February 2021 quickly shaped Covid-19 debates and the government’s actions.

It is not weakness to change the course in public health decisions. In April 2020, we penned a blog where we asked, “from no need for masks to masks for all?” This was at a time when the scientific community was not sure if there was a need for people to wear masks. But now masks are highly recommended as the most reliable protection when used together with other measures like social distancing and the washing of hands.

A lack of a well-articulated response to Covid-19 has largely affected our nation, and therefore, the President’s decision to form a professional committee should be implemented immediately. We are losing great minds, high-quality professionals in health, law, academia and engineering. We must act now to stop further loses.

Our strategy must consider Covid-19 as an opportunity for the country to strengthen trade with the rest of Africa. Most African countries are in many ways interconnected socially, culturally and economically. But infrastructural and political barriers are problems that need to be addressed to ensure smooth flow of goods and services during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. We must immediately address international trade spats diplomatically by following the right authorities and channels.

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Epiphania Ngowi holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Cape Town; Emmanuel Sulle is a research associate at the University of the Western Cape