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The new coronavirus will hit the poor the hardest

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The global outbreak has proven that no country or citizen is immune to the spread of coronavirus 2019. Picture: Supplied
The global outbreak has proven that no country or citizen is immune to the spread of coronavirus 2019. Picture: Supplied

It often begins as a comedy then it quickly turns into a tragedy. But there is no way of measuring when panic is warranted or not.

The first case of the new coronavirus infection has been reported and it has kept people talking. For some it is a cause for laughter. No doubt the jokes are funny but beyond the laughter is there a cause for concern?

Consider how, in the past and definitely in the present, illnesses and calamities mostly affect the poor. The poor in this country, and of course on the entire continent, is always black. But perhaps there is no need to panic, not because the virus might not be a threat.

So here I am thinking about the new coronavirus not just as an illness that could have been avoided if there were thorough checks at the airport. But also as continuation of the reality of poor people whose health is already in state of crisis.

However, as we speak, poor people are already riddled by illnesses. What good does it do to focus on the spectacular when the mundane is as deadly as the spectacle?

The class and race divisions that currently stratify our society play themselves out in the ways which we understand and deal with what we call a disease. There is therefore an unbreakable conversation between the way people live and how they will be affected by certain circumstances.

Although Covid-19 might not have begun in Africa, like many other illnesses, we are the most adversely affected.

In much more practical terms South Africa is unable to deal with some of the problems in its hospitals. Issues around incompetency, maladministration and a shortage of medical facilities have seen a number of people die when their deaths could have been prevented.

Read: SA confirms first case of the coronavirus

To put it more bluntly, the people who will be severely affected are people in the rural places and those who are poor and such people almost always happen to be black. This is an issue that deserves much more attention than it is currently receiving.

Strange as it must seem the diagnosis of the first case of the new coronavirus actually helps us to think more seriously around the general health problems as they affect black people.

The idea is that there is already an onslaught on people that is manufactured by big pharma. It is quite easy to think about how all the big pharmaceutical companies benefit when there is a disease.

Diseases have often left Africa in a vulnerable position and opened it up for abuse of all sorts. The same could be the case with Covid-19 which will no doubt leave us with no choice but to rely on foreign donors to deal with this problem.

This will again place the power in the hands of imperialists who give in order to take and control our continent. These ideas could easily be dismissed as conspiracy but by taking a closer look, it is easy to make a link on how all these issues are intertwined.

Read: Coronavirus threatens Africa’s tourism market

What seems to be clear here is that issues of health cannot seem to be separable and if there is anything we can learn from other epidemics, is that to solve them, we will not only rely on health practitioners.

As scholars it is important that we constantly attempt to make links that will assist us understand the problems we face more clearly.

So here I am thinking about the new coronavirus not just as an illness that could have been avoided if there were thorough checks at the airport. But also as continuation of the reality of poor people whose health is already in state of crisis.

If then we are to have a holistic approach we would understand that often it is not that people are just sick but people are sick because they are also poor.

Dlamini is a former Wits University students’ representative council president and youth activist


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