Monrovia- July 1,2021: Prominent Liberian Economist and politician, Dr. Togbah Nah Tipoteh has placed out his suggestions on how to end the Corona virus in the country. Dr. Tipoteh said as in the case of the Ebola, community awareness needs to be done to end the spread of the virus.

Here is Dr. Tipoteh full assertion below:

AWARENESS TO END CORONA

The most important problem in Liberia is longstanding and widespread poverty. This problem continues to be the pretext for violence and even civil war, as seen in the Liberian Civil War that took the lives of at least 10 per cent of the population of Liberia and left the Liberian economy worse to the point that it has not recovered to its pre-war level.

More than anything else, the people of Liberia want Peace and this is why they cry out loudly and clearly saying: WE WANT PEACE! NO MORE WAR! What remains lacking and needs to be known through awareness raising is that PEACE IS NOT THE ABSENSE OF WAR BUT THE PRESENCE OF JUSTICE!!!

The Civil War in Liberia came because the vast majority of the population did not become aware about the sources of their poverty. The lack of adequate knowledge with the poor was used by greed-driven persons as the pretext for engaging in violence/unconstitutional actions to get State power. If there were adequate mass awareness raising about the poverty problem, the greed-driven persons would not have had the kind of support that they had to overthrow the government violently/unconstitutionally. Corona or no corona, this inadequate awareness continues and leads to the scary situation of of the possibility of the societal situation getting worse whenever there is any public health problem. This lack of adequate awareness rolls on with only one functioning corona testing center in Liberia and it is in Monrovia.

This center is set up, mainly for Liberians who travel abroad, to collect USD75 per person. At Liberia’s only international airport, while the official fee of USD75 per person is charged to get tested for going abroad, some persons have paid up to USD200 to speed up the process and are given false certificates, as they travel illegally. In the same vein, some foreigners have entered Liberia from heavily corona infested countries and greed-driven State managers have collected the financial intake from them, ignoring the impact leading to the current corona pandemic surge in Liberia.

Let us look at the problem of sanitation. Many people died because of the life-threatening garbage problem in Liberia. This problem has led an Elder to say that any country that fails to take good care of its dead people is bound to fail in taking good care of the living people in that country. There is the problem of the garbage at the Center Street Cemetery in Monrovia. Given the mass poverty poverty in Liberia, we have evidence that the living people in Liberia are not given good care by State management. This situation led me to write the Commentary titled: End The Poverty Pandemic To End The Corona Pandemic.

No wonder, the prevailing mass poverty in Liberia shows us the lack of care for the people by their elected Legislators, who have access to at least USD1,000 a day and their foreign friends/partners, in the commercial sector alone, have access to at least USD2 million a day while over 80 per cent of the people of Liberia remain poor, having access to at most less than USD2 a day. Put any disease on top of this situation, we will find out that the situation becomes worse, as poor people are the ones who can not afford to get adequate health care. So, it comes as no surprise that as corona is on the upsurge, opportunism is also on the upsurge with greed-driven persons campaigning illegally for the 2023 election while placing the voters in a state of panic with news of the corona upsurge and what they are prepared to do now for the voters that they never did before in the midst of raging poverty.

The information put out by State managers does not come from their data base because there is only one functioning corona testing center in Liberia. The information comes from panic stricken Liberians who are sick and go to hospitals to find them packed with corona victims in the midst of inadequate quantities of oxygen and the inflow of diseased foreigners in the personal interest of greed-driven State managers.

The mass panic is understood because of the inadequate awareness raising by State managers, as seen in the failure of these managers to follow the public health protocols in the recent past. However, the jam packing of the hospitals and the shortage of oxygen have led to the panic, which has provided yet another opportunity to extend State corruption through the request for additional anti-corona funding. What happened to the earlier funding for attending to the corona pandemic? There is no State response to this question as yet.

Despite the lack of response from the State, we of the Servants of Africa Fighting Epidemics (SAFE), as founded by the late Dr. Mary Nema Brownell and the late Sheikh Kafumba Konneh and me, learned from the ebola experience that action through the Community is the Way Forward for the Better. We must not expect the persons who set fire to the House called Liberia to bring water to put out the fire. So, in the face of the current panic, SAFE has intensified its work, raising awareness about washing hands, wearing masks and keeping social distance. Much more work needs to be done, especially with respect to social distancing on commercial transport and in the market places. The transport owners and the marketeers, especially the Liberian Marketing Association (LMA), are interested in getting money for themselves to the point that they do not pay attention to their own better health.

The LMA collects nearly LD5 million daily from the thousands of marketeers who pay LD25 daily for the space and for garbage clearing but the garbage remains life threatening for months on the ground where they sell their goods. Within the Community Spirit, Miss Liberia 2017 led the Campaign to clean the garbage in market places, only to have some foreign partners gave the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) several trucks without providing any assistance to the Community. Then the MCC placed a pile of big rocks in places where the garbage was located instead of raising awareness to prevent garbage placement in inappropriate places, such as in the market places where food items are on sale for consumption.

This awareness raising work is a process and people who love Liberia must not get tired in continuing the work!!