The world is facing yet another respiratory virus. It is now on the edge of being declared a pandemic as it spreads rapidly out of its origin in China. The prevalence rate is rising steadily, and deaths are piling up even as governments across the world race to wrestle with this latest threat to global health.
The major difference between this new coronavirus (COVID-19) and previous outbreaks like SARS and H1N1 is that it is almost impossible to identify those who are infected early enough to prevent them from infecting others. On average, each patient is infecting 2 to 3 others, and in the modern world in which there is quick and easy travel, large swathes of territory are covered in a very short period of time.
In Kenya, no cases had been reported at the time of writing. However, numerous people with suggestive symptoms had been reviewed and tested and, according to the Ministry of Health, found to be negative. However, there has been an outcry about the government handling the risk of importation of the illness in a very cavalier manner. Just this week, the government announced the resumption of flights from mainland China at a time when other countries are expanding their travel advisories.
It would appear that the government is confusing two important but separate principles of disaster response and applying them inappropriately.
The first principle is appropriate communication. In a potential pandemic situation, authorities are called upon to ensure that the communication meets a particular standard. It must be factual, avoid sensationalism and provide important information for protection and care of the affected population. The communication must be sensitive and avoid trivialising suffering, while also avoiding triggering panic and stress reactions in the population, factors that can impede life-saving interventions in the face of an emergency. In the absence of accurate and sensitive communication from authorities, people come to their own conclusions, create stories out of their own fears, and spread them in networks of family and friends. Soon a frenzy of speculation spreads, making it difficult to tell truth from hoax. The danger with this is that human nature demands a scapegoat for every bad thing, and often this will be a group of people we already have a grievance against. The second important principle in such situation is that the intervention to deal with it must be planned and executed as if we are facing an existential threat to humanity.
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We must deploy our best resources to prevent its spread, discover the best ways of treating those affected and minimise deaths, and prevent recurrence of similar threats to our lives in future. This includes restricting entry into the country for high-risk persons and deploying proven public health measures to slow or prevent the spread of the illness. A robust response not only builds public confidence, but also actually saves lives.
It appears our government has chosen the first approach as its intervention (do not cause panic, downplay the threat, and deploy only halfhearted measures) and the second approach as its communication strategy (treating information as if it is the infectious agent). We can only hope that international control measures work in our favour.
The author is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Moi University.
