What new things did you learn during this lock down?

COVID-19 INSIGHTS

Soon, countries will begin to thaw from the COVID-19 global lockdown. Research and Academic journals will be flooded with all sorts of studies about the impact of the COVID-19 on a wide range of issues, from causation, pathogenesis, management to the economy, human rights violation, mental health, etc.

Ugandans will consume this literature passively. Personally, I have read quite a bit and participated in so many webinars initiated by academics, researchers, and professionals from various fields. The might of this pandemic has been hegemonic, freezing the world’s economy and consumptions. It has also stretched healthcare systems and placed spotlights on many social and historical inequalities in society.

In Europe and the US where its impact remains dramatic, we saw different people affected differently. The poor and the blacks were reportedly suffered a disproportionate level of hospitalization and mortality compared with other races. The bottom line is that COVID-19, as we know, is not a “cold-hearted” killer as such. It kills those already riddled with certain degrees of disadvantages – older, frail, pre-existing conditions, oppressed, and lacks access to medical care.

In Europe, countries have some sort of universal health coverage. This every person can access timely healthcare services they need. In the US, the story is different; fewer people have health insurance and more so, the poor Blacks, Hispanics and a sizeable proportion of rural white population.

The US is the leader of neoliberal economic ideas – where the government is forced out of providing health care and private providers are given the mantle. The colonial healthcare systems that Uganda inherited, was not structured the US way or now the Museveni-era healthcare. The colonial-era healthcare was financed directly by the state from taxpayers’ money, and there was no cost-sharing or discrimination based on ability to pay.

During colonial times, the formal sector was made to privilege colonial workers, most of whom were serving the colonial agenda. Health care and education were part of the reward for their loyal services. Housing was part of the package for teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, Police, Prisons, and the Senior Management Team of various state ministries and agencies.

The health service privileges were extended to the general workers in the formal sector, only employ about 10% of the population or less, while most Ugandans were rural-based farming privately to augment raw materials for European civilization. These farmers also produced cash crops and food crops to sustain the colonial state labour force and paid taxes. A healthy rural reserve sustained a steady supply of labour for expanding mining and industrial work. This post-war social policy was consistent with the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940, and amended in 1945.

The Museveni-era liberalization of the economy dismantled that. They imposed cost-sharing, reduced the size of government workers at first, to shed off “Obote’s loyalists”, before expanding it irregularly with a loyal ethnic-based cadership.

The Museveni regime reducing the proportion of its health spending on health neglected its management and maintained a stockout of essential medicines to about 80%. It is only recently that they have mooted a National Health Insurance System, copying from those in capitalist countries.

 Most industrialized capitalist countries offer healthcare based on health insurance policies, mostly related to labour attachment. But there are many different models. In Canada, only the state can buy health insurance, thereby reducing market competition – the type in the US where individuals and companies buy health insurance from the same market. In Switzerland, insurance companies cannot make a profit, except on supplemental plans; Japan, Germany, UK, and others have their own systems tailored to the typology of their welfare state systems. Rwanda, our next door has its own locally made success story.

During this COVID-19, I learned that liberalized healthcare may be a façade that cannot sustain frequent pandemics of our generation. There is a need to rethink seriously of universal healthcare as a public good and rights of the people, not a market commodity for those who can afford it.

End. 

COVID-19 and the limit of science-inclined education policy

COVID-19 Hotspot - 

The coronavirus continues to challenge the logic of the old-world order by spotlighting most of its institutional inadequacies and policy lapses. However, the complementary role of physical and social sciences is reaffirmed for cynics to bear.

It would take a long article to reproduce the origins and imperatives of having both the physical and social sciences taught at colleges and universities. Experiences of COVID-19 has simplified this debate for public consumption.

There is a need to clarify the purpose of education as an important driver of a progressive society. The way education is organized in a country reflects the ideology of the regime in power on a wide range of issues. Education feeds all the sensitive aspects of the economy and informs societal functions.  How a country organizes and delivers its education also reveals its patterns of domination. For instance, when a certain group in a country has unfettered access to the best education that a nation can offer, such a group also obtains and sustains the monopoly of power over the means production.

A good example is when state resources are skewed to privilege policies for one sector over the other; undermine physical sciences over social sciences; affirmative action for one group over the other; and state scholarship for one group and denied to another.  

In the above scenario, a country is likely to get a section of its graduates who are problematized, reduced in esteem, made subjects with limited prospects. This group often strays into careers that are underdeveloped. For a long time, comedy and music suffered such a fate, until a new generation transformed these industries into lucrative, competitive, and attractive ventures.

The COVID-19 is here with us, but scientists have failed to find a timely cure, vaccines, or deliver consistent tests. Much of the COVID-19 work is situated at the community levels and moderated between persons.

This virus is profoundly sensitive and intelligent in selecting its target and population. No one can yet explain why it has shied away from poor Africans. A recent journal article observed that this pandemic has become a great sampling device for social analysis. The author argued that unlike other previous outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemic, COVID-19 has made visible the usually latent societal structures of inequities.

Most societies have embraced the limit of sciences in dealing with COVID-19, thereby turning to break community transmission of COVID-19 using non-scientific measures such as quarantine and physical isolation. The Lancet Journal is full of commentaries decrying potential mental health impacts of these measures. Prolonged quarantine measures may even trigger a wave of psychosocial distress pandemic.  

But most of this work involves the expertise of social workers, sociologists, and community workers in tandem with field scientists.

For instance, public health officials are trained sufficiently and equipped with the science and social theories that attempt to mobilize, understand, organize, and move societies out of danger.

Thus, COVID-19 has demonstrated that a prudent modern society could do with both physical and social sciences such that where one fails, the other compliments. After all, scientific innovations find relevance with its social adaptation. A television could only work with theatres; immunization gained public approval through community interactions; politics define sciences in as much as scientific advancement shapes and defines politics, culture, and traditions. The left-hand washes the right hand.

The beauty of being alive is that we learn every day. The mechanics of life have roots in sciences while the course of daily life is steeped within a complex mesh of social relations.

We now know that with just minimal sciences, such as accurate testing of COVID-19 and proper medical care, the most potent public response to breaking community transmission of a COVID-19 is physical isolation and change in patterns of wasteful consumption.

End.