Detained at hospital, broke graduate feels Covid pain
The 58 seconds long selfie video starts with the sound of a dry cough from another patient in the background. No doubt, the person coughing is a Covid-19 patient.
Lying on his back is a young man with teary eyes and humid face. At the fourth second, he begins to sob.
Then, he begins to speak. His voice is faint and husky.
He whispers: “Anyone… willing to sacrifice to get me get out of this hospital, I will really appreciate. I am tired of staying in this premise. I have no money, who will help me get out of here? I am tied. I’m feeling like I am going to get infected again. Someone, please come through for me. Someone, please help me wipe these tears away. Someone, please help me restore my smile. I plead with anyone who is touched to help me out.”
The man in the clip is Joel Ochieng Dola from Mikai village, Kakelo ward, Homa Bay County. He is a jobless fresh graduate from the University of Nairobi.
On August 3, he was admitted to the Labib Hospital in Eastleigh, Nairobi due to Covid-19 complications where doctors established that his lungs had been severely damaged.
Joel was put on oxygen for a week. Luckily, he recovered and was discharged on August 11.
Just like several other jobless youths in the country, he has no health insurance. Coupled with his poor background, he has not been able to offset Sh830,000 hospital bill.
Huge hospital bill
He has been detained at the hospital and the bill is growing at Sh10,000 a day as food and bed charges.
The Bachelor of Commerce graduate is currently appealing to well-wishers to help him clear the bill and secure his freedom from an isolation ward where he risks being re-infected.
He sent me the video at a time I was doing this assignment with the aim of disapproving the dangerous notion among some Kenyans that coronavirus is a rich man’s disease. He agreed that I can use his plight to illustrate.
The misconception that the disease affects the affluent only has been spread on social media and by word of mouth since the first case of the virus was declared in the country in March 2020.
Consequently, it has aided in intensifying the disregard to laid down Covid-19 containment protocols and vaccine hesitancy, especially among low-income Kenyans.
Accordingly, a number of poor people have lowered their guard and continue to attend public gatherings with reckless abandon.
Victor Owino, 29, a resident of Manyatta slum in Kisumu County, says that he is aware that coronavirus is real but has not known any poor person, like him, who has contracted it.
Misconception and misinformation
“It is the corrupt people in government who are dying, as we have seen in the news. Imagine, I attended the Madaraka celebrations on June 1 and was part of the multitude that welcomed the Deputy President William Ruto and other top politicians at Kondele on that day. Many of us wore no mask. But I am still very healthy three months later,” Owino said unashamed.
We used various online tools, namely Intelligence X Facebook Graph Searcher, manual Facebook Search and Tweetdeck to locate similar forms of misinformation and discovered that the misconception has spread like fire on dry savanna.
Among the Luo speaking Facebook users, one particular misinformation claimed:
“Corona en tuo jopesa, omako Arteta gini gi Prime Minister, to omako mana jii e airport” (Coronavirus is a disease for the rich, it attacked Arteta and the Prime Minister. Again, at the airport).
The post then challenged: “Koro in ma intie Gwasi Magunga into wasi wasi mar ang’o ma in godo?” (So, you who is in Gwasi Magunga – arguably one of the remotest parts of Kenya - what is the source of your anxiety?).
This piece of misinformation emerged on March 13 2020, just a day after Arteta contracted the virus.
The post by Adhiambo Ochiel, a Facebook user had 111 likes, 44 comments and 14 shares. Those who shared it like Tuol Calary also had their posts re-shared.
Succumbed to the virus
There are those who took it as a challenge by replacing Gwasi Magunga with what in their opinions were other remote habitats in the country.
Geoffrey Jabuya, for instance, on March 15 2020, replaced it with a place known as Ochot Odong in Kendu Bay.
In Kenya, famous people who have contracted or succumbed to the virus have had their stories told in the media whereas their poor compatriots hardly have their cases known.
Dr Kevin Osuri, the immediate former Nyanza secretary-general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU), notes that it is absurd that some Kenyans hold the notion that Covid-19 is a rich man’s disease.
“This disease is non-discriminatory regardless of one’s economic status. I have seen patients of all nature at the facility where I currently work as an administrator. I am attached to a rural health facility in Homa Bay County. The infection is active but the rate of infection is low, thankfully,” Dr Osuri said.
Joel observes, “People should stop the misinformation. I am a poor Kenyan youth with no job. Here I was with Covid-19 and now begging for good Samaritans to come through for me. If I had money, I would not have been begging the way I do. Tell everyone that coronavirus can infect any human being,” he said. BY DAILY NATION
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