Corona in Liberia
- Aletta van Popta
- 16 mei 2020
- 3 minuten om te lezen
I can’t even remember when the last time was that I read a book and I actually enjoyed reading it. I don’t take the time for reading and I am not that good at it, but last week I read a book and I really enjoyed reading it! I read Mighty be our Powers by Leymah Gbowee. A gripping story of Leymah’s journey from hopelessness to empowerment and how, together with the women of Liberia, she delivered peace to a nation. Leymah was a young woman when the Liberian civil war started in 1989. She describes what impact the civil war had on her as a young woman and what it did to her family. As a young mother she was trapped in domestic abuse, but found the courage to turn her bitterness into action by uniting the Liberian women for the Liberian Mass Action for Peace. She tells you about her feelings and emotions and all the horrible things that happened in her country during the civil war. Leymah Gbowee really is a remarkable woman.
The first and second civil war were from 1989 till 2003. In 2005 were the first elections after the war and with 59% Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won and became the first modern elected female head of state in Africa. After the civil war they had to build everything up again, and till today Liberia still is one of the poorest countries in the world. While I was reading Mighty be our Powers I was wondering how Liberia is doing in times of the coronavirus. On march 16 the first case was reported in Liberia and its first death on 4 April. Liberia was one of the first countries to start screening people on COVID-19 at airports. Currently when I am writing this post there are 250 cases and 20 deaths in Liberia.
I read this article where Deddeh Mulbah, a 29-year-old midwife from Liberia said that some women give birth at home because of the coronavirus. She fears that the coronavirus will wreak havoc in the same way the Ebola outbreak did in 2014 and 2015. Ebola led to high rates of maternal deaths in Liberia in the middle and aftermath of the epidemic, due to women avoiding healthcare services and resorting to dangerous home births instead. Campaigners have now raised concerns the coronavirus pandemic will lead to pregnant women and newborn babies needlessly dying from preventable causes during childbirth. Pregnant women in Liberia are highly anxious about the coronavirus and are scared to access health-care services.
She said healthcare staff are battling against a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and being forced to make their own hand sanitizer from scratch. “In this crisis, it is not easy,” Ms Mullbah adds. “The masks are not easy to get. There are no gloves. No sanitizer. We have to make our own sanitizer. We just buy the alcohol ourself and mix it with Dettol to make sanitizer for our own safety. But now the sanitizer is finished.”
Before the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic Liberia had 50 doctors for its population of 4.3 million. The country's health system was seriously weakened by the civil war. The Ebola crisis put huge pressure on healthcare workers in Liberia, and this posed a serious threat to pregnant women and girls giving birth at this time, leading to a rise in maternal deaths. Many of these healthcare systems still haven’t fully recovered from the devastation caused by the Ebola outbreak and won’t be in a position to cope with another pandemic.
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