Decisive leadership behind Zim’s Covid-19 success

AS Covid-19 is downgraded from an international public health emergency, the Zimbabwean Cabinet has removed the special measures introduced to contain the infection, and so we are largely back to the normal we had before Covid-19, but with a dramatically improved public health system.

And this comes with that confidence that comes from making the right decisions right along the line when faced with a crisis.

That decisive leadership exhibited by President Mnangagwa, who took the advice of his best health professionals, means that Zimbabwe weathered the Covid-19 storm better than most and has emerged a stronger and better country.

After about 7 million global deaths in just over three-and-a-half years, the World Health Organisation last week declared that Covid-19 was no longer a public health emergency of international concern, but noted that someone was still dying of Covid-19 every three minutes somewhere in the world.

WHO has not declared that the world is free of Covid-19, it has simply moved the virus down a level and made it, for practical purposes, an “ordinary” flu virus that can still kill and has recommended that people still take precautions, the sort of precautions they ought to be taking against other airborne diseases that will kill some of the infected.

But the rapid decline in infections and deaths so far this year has moved it from being an international public health emergency and largely allowed most of the world to return to a preCovid normality and to count the costs and remember how Covid-19 was eventually largely defeated.

WHO gives the rapid research that found effective vaccines and then the mass vaccination campaigns across most of the world, with billions of people lining up for their shots, as the main factor that so downgraded the Covid-19 threat.

Many countries never reached the herd immunity levels of vaccination, but most managed to persuade enough people to take their shots to create adequate barriers that slowed and eventually largely halted the spread of the virus.

This was backed up by people, as individuals but usually with Government advice and the smarter Governments enforcing quarantine and lockdown rules, minimising their risks of infection in the first place.

There were many other health gains from those public health and safety measures, with a lot of other infections seeing reduced infection rates since the anti-Covid measures worked for them as well. All this worked, but there are still those 7 million graves around the world, equivalent to almost half the population of Zimbabwe if you want to get some idea of how had Covid-19 was.

But that was still not much more than around 10 percent of the last major global flu-type outbreak, the Spanish Flu a hundred years earlier in 1918 to 1921.

This time we had vaccines, we had far better advice, and most of the world had far better public health facilities. If we had not done what we did we were looking at roughly the same numbers as those terrible tens of millions of deaths.

So we can learn. And one lesson the whole world must have learned is that new infections can spring out of almost nowhere. Covid-19 appears to be a mutation of a virus found in a small population of a single species of bats in south central China, that passed into another and as yet unknown animal host that then passed it on to the first human, who had possibly prepared and eaten that intermediate host.

Who knows where the next infection or next mutation will arise?

There are plenty of animal species in every country, and viruses have high mutation rates so there is an ever-present danger.

The other lesson learned is that while restrictions on global travel certainly helped slow the advance of infection, no country managed to keep itself clear, not even small island states.

The slowdown gave a lot of countries more time to prepared counter measures and upgrade their health facilities before they were overwhelmed, and so were well worth while. But pedlars of xenophobia were wrong when they assumed that “evil foreigners” brought in the disease. It was usually their own citizens coming home from holidays and business trips.

One lesson we have learned is that the WHO is absolutely essential. It managed to keep the flow of quality and highly accurate information coming, and put together global recommendations of best practice to slow and defeat the virus.

No one had to operate in the dark and while there were a lot of people who rejected WHO advice, almost all Governments and their health advisors at least listened and most took that advice and tried to persuade their citizens to take it.

We also learned that the global pharmaceutical research industry can react quickly and can build vaccines for many diseases, although regrettably not all. HIV with its ultrafast mutation rates and peculiar centre of infection in the actual immune system is an example of one where effective vaccines are still missing.

But where a vaccine is possible, then we can develop these quickly. Several approaches were used, and the world had a range of effective vaccines with WHO doing its job of investigating and passing the ones that worked safely.

Global vaccination rates were hampered by the “anti-vaxxers”, people who usually roam the wilder shores of ultra-rightwing politics in the USA and parts of Europe and usually only damage themselves. This time their lies and fake information helped to fill a lot of those 7 million graves as they abused religion and abused social media.

Social media is neutral. It can pass on good live-saving information very quickly, and it can spread hatred and lies very quickly. It depends who is using it and why.

Zimbabwe learned a lot of lessons. Right from the start we had President Mnangagwa listening very hard to his medical advisors and professionals, studying the WHO advice, and taking action, early and effectively, and ensuring that the resources for vaccination and care were in place, and that public health precautions were there and were working.

There are countries where Presidents did not trust the professionals, and they have a lot more of the graves. Ours did and the death tolls were a lot lower.

When we look at the death totals in some countries and compare them to what we suffered, we can count ourselves lucky that there was no equivocation at the top. As the President noted, you can fix an economy, but you cannot bring back the dead. That decisive leadership meant we had far fewer graves than average and far fewer than we could otherwise have expected.

The public health services were already being improved, as part of the general reforms of the Second Republic, but Covid-19 saw this accelerated.

The priority given to public health was highlighted by President Mnangagwa assigning Vice President, Constantino Chiwenga, as Minister of Health and Child Care to oversee the detailed campaign and make sure the tens of thousands of Zimbabwean health professionals could fight the battle with both hands, rather than have one tied behind their back. Now they are fighting with renewed vigour other public health dangers and diseases. So we win twice over.

It is worth pointing out that Zimbabwe received a good share of the international support available from development partners, and that almost all this support was channelled through the Government and the Health Ministry rather than through NGOs.

Those wanting to back health initiatives around the world obviously are more enthusiastic when there is an effective channel, in this case the Ministry, when the country is doing a lot itself under effective leadership, and when every dollar is accounted for and spent properly.

Their support was reinforcing success and good management. We are grateful, but we should also note that we can be grateful because we were doing the job properly in the first place.