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Apr 20, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
HHhundreds of doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel have died since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. These are people who gave their lives to save others. They answered the call of duty and in fulfilling that sacred task, they paid the ultimate price. They left loved ones behind, some of whom are children whose future will have to be provided for.
Billions of us sit in our homes, protecting ourselves from infection from COVID-19, while these brave souls have no choice. They have to go to work at hospitals, where one is likely to be infected. They have to tend to the sick. Guyana, though poor, has managed well in terms of no deluge, but in many other countries – advanced, industrialised nations – there is a shortage of protective gears because of a deluge of victims.
In fact, a shipment of such material to Jamaica by a company in the US has been stopped because the American government needs it. A shipment was held up by the US Government for Bermuda, but was later released. The UK has a shortage of gowns and has ordered 400,000 of them from Turkey, along with kits and other materials.
The Guardian of the UK has the photos of a number of doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel who have died. The Guardian wrote that the 77 deaths of health care workers that the newspaper found in the UK may be far more.
In rich countries struck by the pandemic, the economy may be able to come to the assistance of heath care workers. For example, the US churned out two trillion dollars to assist its citizens and a huge part of that has gone to medical people. In Guyana, we have not been ravished, and one hopes that day will never come. It probably will never come, because the virus appears to be tapering off.
Also, it appears that the effects of the weather on the virus in tropical countries like Guyana, make it less likely that we will suffer the horrific devastation we have seen in many colder climates.
But there is a gargantuan but. I do believe we can suffer hundreds of deaths, maybe thousands, if we do not bring the election impasse to an end. This election crisis can fuel serious amounts of deaths by the fact that it allows for large numbers of people to interact with each other. I dealt with that in my column of Thursday, April 16, 2020 captioned, “The election conspirators are going to make thousands die from COVID-19.”
While we are in the throes of this pandemic in Guyana, I am proposing generous donations to our heathcare workers. Georgetown Hospital doctors are not upper middle-class people. Guyana’s nurses and lab technicians are traditionally from the working class stratum. And of course, the porters (large numbers of whom have died in other countries) are poor souls.
In this time of unprecedented terror from the unknown, let us open our hearts to all of the employees of state medical institutions whose lives are at risk as I type this column. I am urging for some kind of fund to be set up ASAP. From my meagre resources, I will donate $10,000.
There are billionaires in this country. If struck with the virus, they cannot leave; the world’s airports are closed. Surely, they can pinch a few millions from their billions to help our healthcare workers. Nurses, porters and lab technicians, in this climate of impending death, should not be allowed to jump on a crowded bus to go to work. We should provide special transportation for them. This is where our donations matter.
In the US, some of the biggest names in entertainment have done a virtual concert titled “One World: Together at Home” which has raised $128M to help health workers. We in poor countries like Guyana may not have those kinds of resources, but whatever little we can contribute, let’s do it. A million dollars, three million, ten million will go a long way in protecting those whose lives are on the line right at this moment.
I don’t think there has ever been a situation in Guyana, in our entire history, where our health workers have been so exposed to dying from a pandemic. Once more, I call on every human in this country and all Guyanese wherever they are, let us donate money and resources to our healthcare workers.
I end with a quote from one of philosophy’s greatest minds, Immanuel Kant: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.”
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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