MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – As richer countries compete to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Somalia remains the rare place where much of the population has not taken the coronavirus seriously. Some fear they have been shown to be more deadly than anyone knows.
“Certainly, our people do not use any form of protection measures, or masks or social distancing,” Abdirizak Yusuf Hirabeh, COVID-19 government incident manager, said in an interview. “If you move around the city (of Mogadishu) or the whole country, no one even talks about it.” And yet infections are on the rise, he said.
Places like Somalia, the Horn of Africa nation shattered by three decades of conflict, will be the last to see COVID-19 vaccines in significant numbers. With part of the country still belonging to the al-Shabab extremist group linked to al-Qaeda, the risk of the virus becoming endemic in some hard-to-reach areas is strong: a fear for some parts of Africa amid slow arrival of vaccines.
“There is no real or practical research on the matter,” said Hirabeh, who is also the director of Mogadishu’s Martini Hospital, the largest patient with COVID-19 treatment, who saw seven new patients on day he spoke. He acknowledged that neither the facilities nor the equipment are adequate in Somalia to deal with the virus.
Less than 27,000 virus tests have been conducted in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, one of the lowest rates in the world. Less than 4,800 cases have been confirmed, including at least 130 deaths.
Some worry that the virus will spread to the population as another misdiagnosed but deadly fever.
For 45-year-old street beggar Hassan Mohamed Yusuf, this fear has become almost certain. “At first we saw this virus as one more form of the flu,” he said.
Then three of her young children died after coughing and high fever. As residents of a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict or drought, they did not have access to coronavirus testing or adequate care.
At the same time, Yusuf said, the virus hurt his efforts to find money to treat his family as “we can’t get close enough” to people to petition.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Somali government tried some measures to limit the spread of the virus, closing all schools and closing all domestic and international flights. Mobile phones rang with messages about the virus.
But social distancing has long since disappeared from the country’s streets, markets or restaurants. On Thursday, some 30,000 people crowded a Mogadishu stadium for a regional football match with no face masks or other anti-virus measures in sight.
The mosques of the Muslim nation never faced restrictions, for fear of reactions.
“Our religion taught us hundreds of years ago that we should wash our hands, face and even legs five times a day and that our women should wear facial veils, as they are often weaker. So it is all disease prevention, if it really exists, ”said Abdulkadir Sheikh Mohamud, an imam from Mogadishu.
“I left the matter to Allah to protect us,” said Ahmed Abdulle Ali, a shop owner in the capital. He attributed the increase in coughing during prayers to the change of seasons.
A more important protective factor is the relative youth of the people of Somalia, said Dr. Abdurahman Abdullahi Abdi Bilaal, who works at a clinic in the capital. More than 80% of the country’s population is under 30 years old.
“The virus is here, absolutely, but people’s resistance is due to age,” he said.
It was the lack of post-mortem investigations in the country that allow the true extent of the virus not to be detected, he said.
The next challenge in Somalia is not simply to get COVID-19 vaccines, but also to persuade the population to accept them.
This will take some time, “just like what it took our people to believe in polio or measles vaccines,” a concerned Bilaal said.
Hirabeh, responsible for Somalia’s virus response, agreed that “our people have little confidence in vaccines,” saying many Somalis hate needles. He called for serious awareness campaigns to change his mind.
The logistics of any COVID-19 vaccine deployment is another major concern. Hirabeh said Somalia expects the first vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, but worries that the country has no way to handle a vaccine like Pfizer’s that requires staying at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius.
“One that could stay between minus 10 and 20 may be suitable for the Third World as our country,” he said.