Ghanaian Times: Coronavirus: Let’s applaud our frontline health professionals

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the world, one group of people that we must continue to be thankful for, are the frontline health professionals who are sacrificing theirs lives to make us safe.

All over the world, multitudes of people are showing tremendous goodwill and support for the selfless sacrifices the health professionals and workers are offering in the face of the catastrophe that has engulfed the world.

In Europe, particularly Spain, Italy, The Netherlands and Portugal, some of the worst-hit countries, people came together last weekend, to pay tribute to COVID-19 healthcare professionals for putting their lives at risk to help save the rest of us.

Although most of these countries are under lockdown and the people confined to their homes, they joined forces in a social media fuelled movement, to stand in their balconies to applaud their frontline health professionals.

The show of gratitude for the healthcare personnel with claps and cheers was exceptional and echoed around the world as well as reinforced the fact that people everywhere appreciate all frontline health care workers who are putting themselves at risk to curb the rising tide of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

This category of workers is facing tremendous challenges at this difficult moment as the world battles a pandemic with no known cure which is killing people across the world.

In Africa and particularly Ghana, we have not shown the same level of appreciation for our professional health workers whose work is more daunting than their counterparts in the more advanced world.

As a matter of fact the health workers face terrifying challenges in the coming days and weeks as it is going to be more daunting as the COVID-19 pandemic peaks and spreads across the country.

Already, some of the health workers are complaining about lack of basic Personal Protection Equipments (PPEs) for their work on the frontline. This is in addition to inadequate health facilities equipped to cater for COVID-19 cases.

Thankfully, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, acknowledging the difficulties the health workers are facing, expressed the government’s commitment to provide frontline health workers with enough protective equipment to combat the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In a meeting with members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Jubilee House in Accra last Friday, the President said the government, through the Ministry of Health, had made arrangement to provide adequate protective equipment to boost the confidence of health workers.

“The measures we need to take to give confidence to our frontline health workers…that they can step up with some degree of confidence to help us battle this disease are so critical. The Ministry of Health is doing the best that it can to make sure that they have the protective equipment,” he said.

The Ghanaian Times commends government for the efforts in providing the needs of the frontline health professionals and joins the call for adequate support for them to step out confidently to work to save all of us.

We also call on all Ghanaians to also follow the exemplary show of appreciation exhibited in Europe recently by the public by applauding the frontline health professional for their selfless dedication to work in these difficult times.

For those of us who cannot face the disease head on because we are not health professionals, we urge all to keep calm, practice good hygiene, observe social distancing and above all, stay at home in our locked down areas.