By Valentine Amanze
The Director of the Benin City-based Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, has appealed to the Nigerian government and citizens to see the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as a huge threat to the society.
He also advised the government to keep implementing the response measures in ways that are suitably adapted to the society’s context, while appealing to Africans to unite against coronavirus.
He claimed that in Africa the crisis has highlighted the needs of the countries, as well the deficiencies of their socioeconomic and development models.
His words: “This crisis has shown as well that our health systems are not adequately adapted to a pandemic like this.”
He disclosed that multilateral institutions and foreign countries have already started injecting billions of dollars into the continent in the form of credits, loans and grants.
On the new book of his outfit, titled, “Who Benefits from Corona? A breakfast with Mr. Gates,” Bassey said that it provided a detailed overview of the African scenario with regard to the pandemic, describing the finances around the crisis and the main features surrounding COVID-19.
The book, he said, calls for an urgent change of the current socioeconomic and development model, and a shift to being a
continent that refuses to be used for risky experimentations whether for financial speculation or for purposes of “depopulation”.
According to him, the book is a manifesto for African people.
He advised: “We need to be confident that COVID-19 will be beaten. This crisis will show the determination, strength and resilience of African health workers operating in difficult circumstances.
“It will also show the social webs of support that sustains our people, and which must not be disrupted by contrived policy measures.”
He called on the African civil society to unite and closely monitor COVID-19 and its related policies on African continent.
“With all the help received we need to make our institutions, particularly those in the health sector stronger and resilient. The support must also not drag more countries into debt. We cannot allow that when the COVID-19 pandemic ends, our continent continues to be in the same dependency scenario that we are in today. We want our people to stop living in a survival mode. We demand the right to universal public health and assured basic income implemented all over the continent”.
On this year’s Earth Day celebration, Joyce Ebebeinwe, the Biosafety Officer of HOMEF, urged humans to learn to live in harmony with nature and desist from manipulations of viruses and other living organisms.
She said, “Our health systems are not equipped to respond to the needs of the people most in need in Nigeria and in many other parts of the world.”
