Covid-19: Health Experts Should Lead The Fight, Not Politicians - Dr. Anyagre

Dr Benjamin Anyagre, Executive Director of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII), said this in an interview that the covid-19 fight should however by no means serve as a source of political competing and rivalry.

He said whilst health workers in Africa were doing their best to curb the pandemic, COVID-19 had exposed certain weaknesses within the governance systems on the continent that needed corrections.

Dr. Anyagre said the pandemic had for example exposed weaknesses in social well fare systems, such as the lack of appropriate data, to facilitate the proper identification of the vulnerable in the society for administrative purposes during a crisis.

He observed that it should for example be possible to identify and distribute food to specific people in the society, without creating chaotic scenarios, if there was a well-established means of doing that.

Dr Anyagre proposed that in the meantime, institutions such as the churches could be involved in helping with the provision of data for governments to manage the concerns of the vulnerable in society.

He said the institutions had knowledge of individuals that belonged to them, and could help with the provision of information to the government.

"The time has come for us to reform our public institutions and systems, and make them more effective, towards confronting events like the COVID-19," Dr. Anyagre said.

---GNA