The importance of Social Capital amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 - Dr Chinonso Egbemba

Dr Chinonso Egbemba is a medical practitioner, who is popularly known as @aproko_doctor by his fans and followers on Social Media especially Twitter.

He took to his Twitter page to discuss the topic.

Below are his tweets concerning the topic.

At the beginning of this COVID19 pandemic in Nigeria, I mentioned 3 things that the infection will expose;

1. Quality of governance

2. Quality of Healthcare

3. Social capital

So far, we have seen the results gotten from the first 2, but I want to focus on social capital today.

Social capital is simply how we rally around one another in times of stress, not just all about money.

For example, when you are admitted in the hospital, do people rally around you to get you things, be company or generally support you. That is social capital.

With the COVID19 infection, we knew that we did not have the quality of care that was obtainable in countries like Germany, and many people did not trust the government.

We had only one thing left: Social Capital.

 

Private companies started to give their part, donations came in.

One organisation that caught my attention was CACOVID - The Coalition Against COVID19.

This is a connection between private individuals, the Federal Government, WHO and the NCDC to help reduce the burden of this virus on the healthcare system of Nigeria.

So far CACOVID is supporting the fight with hospital beds, Nigeria has a low hospital bed to people ration and they are starting with Lagos (1,000 beds), Kano (500 beds), Rivers (210 beds), Abuja (200 beds), Enugu (200 beds) and Borno (200 beds)

This will help us a great deal.