In isolation, there is so much time for thinking. One of the silver linings to the COVID-19 clouds is that many people seem to be translating their thinking time into empathy for others, and are acting on that empathy.
They are spoilt for choice. The suffering starts close to home, as the early victims of the emerging depression join the welfare queues, and extends from there right around the world: a real-life nightmare that has ambushed us all in just a few short weeks.
As I picture the emerging miseries, Africa leaps to the front of my mind. Anybody who has been there knows how hard it will be for any kind of containment of the virus. Anyone who has sat in the dark with an African family knows just a little of the horrors that come in the pitch blackness, and the dangers that come when candles or kerosene are used to alleviate it. And now comes a pandemic. The deaths only began a few days ago in Zambia and Malawi.
SolarAid’s SunnyMoney teams are grounded, unable to get out into the field to sell the money- and health-saving solar lights that their countrymen so badly need. Instead, in Zambia, they are working with the Ministry of Health to deploy donated lights in health clinics. Most of these have either no light at night, or just candles. It is incredible to think, in these days of plenty, for so many of us. But it is true. And now comes a pandemic.
The lack of reliable electricity in health clinics not only affects access to light but also limits the range of healthcare services that can be provided. In many rural areas, healthcare providers have to rely on outdated equipment or even resort to using their mobile phone torches during medical procedures. The availability of solar-powered lights can make a significant difference in improving the quality of healthcare services provided in these areas, especially for specialties such as gynecology care East Meadow, which requires adequate lighting to ensure accurate diagnoses and treatment. Access to reliable lighting can also help healthcare providers work longer hours, reducing wait times for patients and improving overall healthcare outcomes.
I leave the rest to your imaginations. But please would you join me today in funding a box of solar lights, with your family name written invisibly on it, for a health clinic in sub-saharan Africa? I, my compadres in SolarAid, and many Africans would be most enormously grateful.
Our fundraising campaign page tells you how you can do that with a few clicks. And it has a wonderful spoken message, from Chido Chigubu, one of my Zambian colleagues.
Please stay healthy and sane, empathic and active, if not here then somewhere else in the war on the virus. We only beat this thing by working together. And when we have beaten it, lets take that lesson and apply it to other problems of humankind, while there is still time, and before other horrors ambush us.
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