What ails Kano?

Editorial

•Spiralling COVID-19 cases need urgent attention; just as an illness, said to have claimed some 151 lives, needs urgent probe

Just as well: the federal health authorities have declared the Kano case worrisome.  From virtual nowhere, Kano has recorded 73 COVID-19 cases as at April 23 (up from 21 cases a few days before); and jumped to No. 3 on the national COVID-19 table, behind only Lagos and FCT, Abuja.

Besides, there are reported cases of hurried burials from deaths from unconfirmed illnesses.  Though news reports estimate such deaths to be no less than 151 — and those reports claim such deaths have overwhelmed cemetery facilities — the Kano State government has denied any such deaths.

These contrasting positions, on such a serious public health issue, underscore the imperative for an urgent and clinical probe, to ascertain the true situation.

What really ails Kano?  Are the sudden deaths linked to COVID-19?  If they are not, is there another epidemic brewing in Kano, on the sidelines of COVID-19?  Besides, why are COVID-19 cases flaring at an alarming rate in Kano, when compared with other states of the country?

Though Kano hosts an international airport, it is no hub for foreign travel, as Lagos and Abuja.  Yet, since its index case, COVID-19 rises in Kano, more than any other state, in comparative terms.  Is Kano then host to some virulent community transmission?

Clear answers to these troubling questions would help the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), in concert with the Kano State government and private sector donors, to fashion out a strategy to face-down the developing crisis.  Urgent response is imperative, lest Kano becomes the new national COVID-19 epicentre.

That would hardly augur well for Jigawa State, Kano’s far-less developed neighbour, carved out of the old Kano State.  It’s no mirth that the Kano State government is reported to have bussed hundreds of Al-majiri kid beggars to their native Jigawa.  That could be another source of virulent COVID-19 community transmission, if any of those kids had caught the virus from Kano; and given the vulnerability of that class of citizens, the poorest of the poor, to epidemics.

So, as the NCDC and partners give Kano special attention, a special eye should also rivet on Jigawa.  Indeed, the overall COVID-19 combat strategy should assume Kano and Jigawa states as joint battlegrounds, the common front lines in which the curtailment and containment strategies must rage.

Still, much of Kano’s angst would appear self-induced.  As Coronavirus raged nationwide, Kano denizens appeared to mock a pandemic that has the dire prospects of turning a catastrophe — and in record time too!  A Television Continental (TVC) news footage beamed a football competition, cynically termed “Corona Cup”, complete with energetic players and a pulsating crowd, with full disregard, nay contempt, for social distancing advisories!

Even if the populace teemed with wilful fatalists who, by that rash action, fondly but falsely proclaimed Kano’s immunity from a health emergency that has laid the entire globe prostrate, was there no government to put things right, with force, if necessary?

That governmental query was reinforced by the dilly-dally before the Kano State government imposed a lockdown.  Even then, that initial lockdown was lifted for Friday Jumat prayers!  It was after those state-wide prayers that Kano’s COVID-19 cases started tearing north.

Now, Kano isn’t the sole guilty case here.  Indeed, most Nigerian states are.  Citizens, for sundry reasons: empty fatalism, desperation to eke out a living and even the lifestyle vanity of mass exercising, appear to thump their nose against a clear and present danger; thus  subverting whatever efforts the government has put in place to arrest the spread of COVID-19.  To those stiff-necked citizens, the present Kano State challenge ought to be a stiff lesson, which should compel positive behavioural change.

Besides, Kano ought to learn from its past in public health emergencies.  Back in 2001, Kano was home to another unfortunate incident over polio vaccine.  The Federal Ministry of Health, in concert with international partner development agencies, mainstreamed the vaccination of children against polio.  But a Kano lobby sold the falsehood that the vaccine was a ploy to inflict mass barrenness!  Needless to say, that campaign floundered.  But the backlash was a resurgence of polio.