By Owen Dhliwayo| This opinion piece is guided by the need to answer a simple question relating to the effects of COVID -19 on the welfare of rural families in Chipinge district.

The most striking effect of the pandemic came after the government announced a 21 day lockdown on March 24, 2020.

Chipinge rural has an estimated 66 403 households according to the 2012 Population Census report. According to the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team report of 20 March 2020, lockdown serve the purpose of reducing reproduction through “slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread.” This is both a mitigation and suppression measure against the spread of the COVID – 19 pandemic. 

There have been social myths related to the COVID -19 pandemic with the widely circulated related to a belief that when it comes to a highly contagious disease, being in a rural area sounds better than being in a crowded town, but that has since been proven to be a deceptive impression.  Hence, PYCD took serious consideration of the district’s cultural background, inclusive of the social agreements and assumptions.

This was possible as PYCD is socially embedded in the community and it enabled an in – depth understanding of the individual context, compliance and the appropriateness of the government measures.  Our approach was culturally sensitive as we explore Ndau culture and traditions in developing information pack for COVID – 19 management and prevention in the district.

However, the families in Chipinge rural have had to grapple with a devastating macro socio-economic and political conditions that had led to the erosion of livelihood options for many households. Platform for Youth and Community Development (PYCD) has been pivotal in information dissemination and raising awareness to the community, and has derived pertinent lessons from this intervention.

The vulnerability of the district is premised on the possibility of under-detection that is typical of health systems in impoverished areas that are under resourced. Chipinge district is experiencing serious lack of food and social protection which in turn is making households vulnerable to infections as they seek to secure food stocks from designated shops like N. Richards and Gain. This is compounded by lost productive time as they are expected to comply with the lockdown order from the government. Lost productive times often means a reduction in household capacity to earn an income and provide for their basic needs.

COVID – 19 has put to the test family resilience as most of the households are unable to meet basic needs of their needs. Formal employment in Chipinge rural is extremely limited and the majority of the households rely on crop production, informal economic activities and cross border trading for survival. However, Humanitarian organizations like GOAL, Zimbabwe Red Cross Society and the Department of Social Welfare have been supporting vulnerable households in the district. They are supporting households that they consider to be under the severity of food insecurity in regard to short term food consumption, and the delivery of food commodities during this period of lockdown was complex and required constant information dissemination on the beneficiaries to observe social distancing as well as adhere to proper hygiene practices. PYCD Gender activists in 20 of the 38 wards in Chipinge took up the task of disseminating information to the beneficiaries.  The food commodities contributed greatly to feeding vulnerable households, and if this multi – agency approach had not been implemented the food security status of most households would have been seriously compromised.

PYCD noted with grave concern that the economy security of most households collapsed drastically during the lockdown period, and it is likely to be a challenge for them to recover from this COVID – 19 pandemic.  Food aid is proving to be a critical aspect of the survival strategies of households in Chipinge district and most families are cutting back on food consumption.

The number of households receiving food aid differed greatly by village households at the height of the 21 day lockdown. The information gathered by the PYCD Gender activists state that the families are bemoaning the inconsistency in the supply and delivery of the food aid particularly at this time when they are relying on the support of these humanitarian organizations.

PYCD Gender Activists were active in disseminating information on health awareness and education around COVID-19 and at the same time collected data on local impacts. This strategy played an integral, increasing, and evolving role in supporting public health responses to COVID – 19 pandemic. Our gender activists’ functionally responsibilities included event detection (food aid distribution), situation awareness and monitoring the compliance and response itself and its effectiveness. It was, however, discovered that the COVID – 19 and the provision of food aid created increased demand for data collection, management during an event response as the gender activists experienced time constraints related to pressure to both collect and instantaneously summarize substantial amounts of data. This has opened exciting opportunities for the PYCD in effective information dissemination and public health surveillance. This experience has transformed how our field teams approach the collection, management and sharing of information during field response.

Owen Dhliwayo is the PYCD Board Member and a resident of Chipinge