All eyes are now focused on the global corona virus threat and the other threats to the livelihood of tens of millions of people in the Horn region seems to be overlooked. Indeed the corona virus is a deadly and difficult to detect and control pandemic. However, there are also visible threats in this part of Africa that are claiming more lives and livelihoods than any pandemic known in history. For instance, in Addis Ababa more people have died in a month from traffic accidents than they did from the pandemic. On average, in the last two months since the outbreak of the pandemic in Ethiopia, an estimated 50 people have lost their lives to these accidents while only four people have died of COVID-19.
Comparisons aside, it is often believed that new events are bound to attract positive or negative advertising simply because they are new fads or notorious happenings. This kind of advertising asymmetry is sometimes bound to push other more serious and more devastating issues to the back burner while giving overblown coverage to one single event. COVID-19 earns its notoriety not because it is the deadliest pandemic in history but because it affects the entire world and turns things upside down in almost every walk of life.
Hence, the massive priority coverage and the hype that it is enjoying and the notoriety it is earning around the world simply because it is impacting all parts of the world. Had the pandemic been an exclusively African or Asian issue, it could have been forgotten by now. There are much more deadly health problems in Africa that are claiming tens of millions of lives every year but hardly attract the attention of the international community unless something unusual happens. Only Western pharmaceutical companies, members of the media, specialized international agencies or business establishments are interested in these health issues.
Malaria is the biggest killer in Africa, Asia and the rest of the world but hardly enjoys the advertisements other less lethal diseases enjoy in the Western world. The corona epidemic is enjoying a disproportionate share of celebrity or notoriety simply because it has become the number one health challenge in all parts of the world.
International aid agencies and other groups have been waging campaigns after campaigns in order to rid the world of the malaria epidemic which is by comparison a killer disease that could have long been eradicated with adequate funding and research from the big multinational pharmaceutical companies. Yet, because antimalaria drugs are meant for the poor and disadvantaged people of Africa and Asia, the issue has so far failed to attract enough research money because of lack of adequate funding into drug research and development. Even if potent drugs are invented, they may not be as profitable as other Western drugs and companies may not have the interest to invest in Research and Development of these drugs.
Malaria is continuing to be the number one public health challenge in Africa and also in Ethiopia if we look at the issue from the point of view of the number of people it is affecting in the rural areas where it is endemic due to geographic, demographic and economic reason. Countries in the Horn of Africa regions are particularly affected by regular or seasonal malaria outbreaks that leave so many people incapacitated and households without their bread earners and productive citizens without the means of receiving adequate medical attention.
As we are jotting down these lines, locust invasions are devastating large stretches of agricultural lands in Horn countries, making it difficult for millions of poor and nomadic and agriculturalist populations earn their livelihoods. These locust invasions have made a bad situation even worse by destroying crops and by reducing entire regions to disaster areas. According to recent estimates, the amount of food grain one single grasshopper consumes at one go could feed thirty five farmers and this is a huge loss.
What is even more alarming nowadays is the fact that locust invasions were infrequent visitors in the past and that they are now returning to the region more frequently and thereby making it difficult to control or destroy them. The pattern of their movements from one country to the other and the degree of devastations they cause has also changed nowadays. In the past, locust invasions were not only rare but were also of short durations. These days, the invasions not only cover large agricultural areas but also come and go between two countries. Locust from Kenya travel to Ethiopia or Somalia repeatedly so much so the disasters they cause are unpredictably huge.
True, locust invasions are not new to these countries or to the Horn region at large. Various historical materials as well as recent studies have come out testifying to the fact that locust invasions were the main causes behind the massive agricultural failures and famines in the past. Ethiopia has been visited by many devastating locust invasions that reduced entire regions to poverty so much so tens of thousands of hungry peasants used to leave their villages in search of better lives elsewhere.
The famines that followed those locust invasions were also Biblical in their proportions leading to massive shift in demographic profiles of vast areas in northern Ethiopia in particular. Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam has written a wonderful study of the effects of locust and other natural hazards on the vulnerability of the populations in traditionally food-scarce communities in northern Ethiopia, a work that was selected as the best publication in the year it appeared.
However, the relationship between locus invasions and famines has often escaped the attention of many academicians and researchers here at home. The few studies that have been commissioned were done by foreigners who were interested in the issue that is most important to the survival of millions in the Horn region.
Floods are also becoming the new frontiers of natural disasters in a number of Horn of Africa countries. In former times, India and other Asian nations claimed the headlines every year following the monsoon rains that left entire regions under water, destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of people. Nowadays, African countries such as Kenya and Somalia are also claiming the headlines because of their flooding rivers that burst their banks and inundate many villages, destroying farmlands as well as economic infrastructures that took decades to build and provide livelihoods to millions of people.
During the rainy seasons in Ethiopia, rivers are usually overflowing their banks and inundating many rural villages to such an extent that crops and animals are destroyed in great numbers and cause not only a natural but also an economic crisis by depriving farmers of their incomes. In the Horn region, floods are caused mainly as a result of the ongoing ecological crisis that is taking place around the world and to which Western countries are contributing the most through their massive CO2 emissions.
The countries of the Horn are generally poor and without the means for controlling those floods or for recovering after the devastations. International action against large-scale flooding is so far limited to providing the means of postflooding means of survival although the problem should be addressed internationally through the mechanism out in place to address ecological disasters in general.
Now that countries of the Horn are generally focused on the battle against COVID-19, and earmark most of their available resources to combat the pandemic, the resources set aside for fighting malaria epidemics, flooding and locus invasions are inevitably becoming insufficient. Although there are a number of agencies for fighting malaria epidemics in these countries, the available resources fall short of the requirements as victims of malaria are growing faster than the available medical and financial resources and this is going to put additional pressure on the economies of these countries.
Inter-regional agencies against malaria or locust invasions are therefore required to coordinate their actions in the context of the present challenges that are so overwhelming that it may be impossible to address them at the national levels alone. International agencies to should not ignore the daily plights of millions of people in the Horn whose livelihoods are further compromised by natural disasters such as floods or malaria outbreaks.
The ongoing global pandemic is deservedly claiming the limelight but this should not be an excuse to ignore the other even more deadly natural disasters that have been affecting the peoples of the Horn for many decades now. Leaders in the region should rather adopt a holistic approach that would look at these problems as they impact one another and create formidable challenges as well as opportunities for effective actions. As it is often argued, the Horn of Africa is naturally endowed with many resources and mainly human resources that could make wonders if they were mobilized in a way that make them the direct owners of their destinies. Looking at the problems alone would miss the point and what is needed at present is a people-focused and people-owned strategies of action and not a top to bottom flow of ineffective aid or solutions, particularly foreign aid. The Horn counties therefore need to reassess their priorities and most of all, coordinate their actions against little advertised natural calamities that are most damaging than any newborn disease.
The Ethiopian Herald May 31 2020
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
