June 1, 2021
By: Francis F.M.Harding
The COVID-19 pandemic shows “none of us are safe unless all of us are safe”,especially the poorest. Each year the Berggruen Institute awards $1 million prize to individuals who move the needle of social transformation in philosophy and culture through thought or action. More by osmosis than design, the jury has always settled on a figure at the heart of the zeitgeist.
The first prize in 2016 went to the Canadian philosopher of cultural pluralism, Charles Taylor, during the immigration crisis and the rise of populism. The next year, the laureate was Onora O’Neill, the former head of the British Academy, for her work in trustworthiness of alternative facts in the digital age. In 2018, Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum whose seminal work, “sex and social justice”, had helped frame the discourse. The next year, the honor went to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when constitutional rule was being challenged by the then U.S. President Donald Trump.
As the COVID pandemic continues to sweep the world, the most recent prize has gone to Paul Farmer, famous for his efforts to tame disease outbreaks in resource-poor places like Haiti and Africa. We the Africans must give three cheers to Paul Farmer for his relentless effort and work he has been doing for Africa. In his contribution, the medical anthropologist who heads Harvard medical school’s department of global health and social medicine offers his thoughts about how to cope going forward as pathogens are bound to proliferate because of “humanity’s ever-increasing encroachment on the natural world.”
Farmer “social medicine” practice is built upon three pillars. The first is “accompaniment”, which means not blaming the afflicted who are ill through no fault of their own but, with comforting compassion, “to keep company with them from beginning violence” of racial discrimination and inequality that thwarts access to medicine and treatment because of a person’s social position.
The third pillar is “a preferential option for the poor” that lack “protection against all sorts of artificial and natural pathogens, are often their victims and then alleged to be the source of pestilence, the reservoirs from which disease migrates to affect the non-poor”.
As farmer puts it, “those whose lives are rarely touched by structural violence and uniquely prone to recommend resignation as a response to it.” Though marveling at the unprecedented speed in which COVID vaccinations have been developed over the past year, he also worries that the most marginal will be forgotten once the wealthy world gets its jobs. His concern is a mounting “containment nihilism,” the attitude that preventing contagion on a global scale “simple isn’t worth it”.
As the good doctor knows from his experience on the ground, the opposite is actually true. The most rapid and effective gains in global health are earned by treating those formerly excluded from care, without restrictions or barriers.
In short, aside from the moral imperative of helping the weakest, enlightened self-interest dictates that none of us are safe unless all of us are safe.
I believe that health workers have been at the front line of the fight against COVID-19.
Their proximity and regular interaction with patients, some of whom come with the COVID-19 infection, increases their risk of acquiring the disease. On the other hand, the chances of inadvertently passing the virus to patients if high when the nurse contracts the disease. For the past thirty-years I have been volunteering for my community on health matters and I therefore have confidence in the potency of vaccines to protect people from illness and death. So I have the confidence in the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. As health workers are still learning as the vaccine is still new. I have read about how it has been well tested and that it is effective and safe, so I am convinced that this is the best step to help stop the furthering of the virus.
We have seen the confidence given by the first gentle man of the state by receiving the vaccine, he has also served as an example and given confidence and assurance to the general public to also accept the vaccines.
We all know how the COVID-19 virus has spread across towns in our country, causing death and malaise and also disrupting delivery of essential services and livelihood since the 31st March, 2020 when the country reported its first case.