Health

Sewing masks to fight Covid

Rabson Kondowe

For D+C Magazine

As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc, there is a massive global shortage of face masks.

This has inspired people around the world to start making their own. Malawians have joined the mask-making campaign.

Some of the #Masks4AllMalawi offerings

An army of volunteers across the country is busy sewing masks from locally available materials such as cotton, clothes and other pieces of fabric.

This non-profit campaign is running under the banner #Masks4AllMalawi.

So far, over two million masks have been produced, reaching a production rate of half a million masks per week.

They are making the masks available free of charge to people throughout the country, especially the rural poor  

The face masks are not medical grade or N95 respirators, that filter particulates such as the corona virus and meet a certain US standard.

However, they have been approved by the Ministry of Health now that medical masks are in short supply.

There continues to be a debate around the efficacy of the cloth masks.

They are not meant to protect the person who wears them from infection, but the people around him or her.

Doctor Gama Petulo Bandawe, the chief medical virologist of the #Masks4AllMalawi campaign, says universal mask usage has a potential public- health benefit towards curbing the virus despite the absence of proven scientific data.

#Masks4AllMalawi is being powered by an international network called the Hestian Project, a programme which normally promotes the use of cleaner cook stoves to reduce exposure to household air pollution.

Conor Fox, one of the campaign organisers and a co-founder of the Hestian Project, said the masks are being distributed through various channels including via the network of 3 000 stove producers across 200 villages which has reached over 3.5 million Malawians.

“We are a group of over 40 consultants, experts and volunteers, including medical epidemiologists and virologists working on a campaign to help people in Malawi respond quickly to the coronavirus,” Fox explains.

The Hestian Project has raised half a million euros for the mask project and got money donated by the general public.

By Saturday, the country had recorded 143 deaths from 4 624 coronavirus cases.

In April, the Malawian government announced a 21-day lockdown which was met by a stop order from the High Court.

The judges acknowledged small-scale traders’ worries, who were afraid to lose their livelihoods.

Citizens are now asked, not ordered, to act in ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

About 90 percent of Malawians work in the informal sector which means a lot of people operate on a hand-to-mouth basis.

Therefore, such lockdowns would put the food security of the poor at high risk.—Dandc.eu

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