Establishing
Sustainable Handwashing Water Strategies to Manage the Spread of COVID-19
in the Regional State of Tigray, Ethiopia
Asayehgn
Desta, Sarlo Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development, USA and
Hadush
Berhe, Deputy Managing Director and Assistant Professor in Industrial
Engineering with Production and Industrial Systems Engineering Streams,
Mekelle University, Ethiopia
Abstract
As the pandemic of COVID-19 spread across the world,
many African countries undertook monetary and fiscal policy to stimulate their economies and to provide disaster relief to poor people and companies. In addition to
undertaking the monetary and fiscal stimulus packages, the various
Ethiopian governments have attempted to shoulder various preventive
health-related measures such as staying at home, hand washing with clean
water, mask-wearing, and maintaining proper social distancing to suppress the spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, since
Ethiopia, prior to COVID-19, was faced with a fragile economic environment and poor health infrastructure, the demand
management policies (monetary and fiscal) that it undertook had starkly
limited impact to spark the subdued Ethiopia’s economy.
Similarly, as the costs of the stringent health-related
preventive measures applied to Ethiopian situation outstripped their benefits, their effects were less fruitful. For example, rather
than serving the Ethiopian people to be released from corona virus attack,
the staying-at-home policy that was advocated to control the spread of the
COVID-19 virus was seen as means of contributing more to the deaths of
poor people from starvation. Also, the maintaining social distancing that
was advocated as an effective way of slowing the threat the corona virus
had limited impact in Ethiopia because 4 to 5 family members share one
room they were subject to being vulnerable
to catching COVID-19. Generally made from thorn-down clothes, mask-wearing
of mouth and eyes is the only affordable and feasible device that could be
implemented to fight against COVID-19 in Ethiopia.
However,
since Tigray has limited access to basic hand washing facilities, as a
short run strategy, policy makers need to meticulous design a combination
of on-site water recycling (water reuse for washing again) or water down cycling
(water reuse for lower-quality application such as gardening) and
rainwater harvesting (purified using bleach or chlorine for drinking) to
reduce water shortage in Tigray and combat the future occurrence and
spread of disease like the
COVID-19 that has already claimed many lives. For the long run strategy,
however, it is reasonably persuasive to agree with the optimistic forecast
made by the World Resources Institute that if every global member is
willing and able to spend 1 per cent of the global GDP or around 29 cents
per person per day, by 2030, the world community would build resilience of
water and make all nations attain water security (Otto, et al 2020) and
thereby make Tigray achieve strong commitment to alleviate the adverse
impact to fight diseases like COVID19, while staying vigilant of the second wave
of infections.
Key
terms:
Corona virus, COVID-19, Monetary and Fiscal Policies Stimulants, Staying
at home, Hand washing, Mask-wearing, Social distancing
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