By NQOBANI NDLOVU
BULAWAYO residents have come together to raise awareness and mobilise resources to save lives in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The launch of the Citizens Covid-19 Monitor is informed by a realisation that central government is incapacitated and failing to provide a trusted response plan to the disease that has killed thousands across the globe.
Before any Covid-19 case was recorded in Zimbabwe, the government had issued statements claiming its readiness to fight the disease but evidence on the ground points otherwise.
Nurses at public hospitals have since downed tools protesting lack of protective clothing, with doctors also protesting the same, exposing governments’ lack of preparedness.
International donors, corporates and individuals have been forced to step in to save lives by providing sanitisers, protective clothing among others while also pulling resources together to equip the country’s teetering health delivery sector.
“We have noted gaps in the fight. Government is evidently not up to the task. It is not doing all it should be doing,” Effie Ncube, one of the co-ordinators of Citizens Covid-19 Monitor said.
“We are lagging behind in comprehensive testing, identification, tracking and the related. Facilities lack equipment.
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“Some like Thorngrove are not up to scratch. Our mission as a consortium is to save lives and livelihoods,” “Our first task as a consortium is to save lives through information dissemination.
“We have to ensure that every household and every person has the correct and accurate information based on the World Health Organisation guidelines.”
A leaflet from the Citizens Covid-19 Monitor shows that it is composed of people from health, disaster management, advocacy, research, human rights and community mobilisation among other backgrounds.
The grouping is also organised into three operational units each tasked with awareness, resource mobilisation and human rights.
“On the human rights front, it is important that even in these tough times we don’t allow the government to use the cover of Covid-19 to prey on people’s rights,” Ncube noted.
“Our job is to ensure that whatever response the state makes, especially with the use of the army and police, it does not violate human rights and civil liberties.
“We are for a human rights-sensitive fight against the pandemic.
“We will monitor government interventions, spotlight successes and inadequacies and expose and report on coronavirus response-related human rights violations.”
Bulawayo has so far recorded one coronavirus case. The victim, a 79-year-old man died last Saturday.
