Features
Social media and vaccine hesitancy
Social media platforms are an important outlet for disseminating information in various aspects of life, and many people are using these platforms and virtual meetings to educate their members.
In this era of COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms are being used widely to share information and education about the disease. This COVID-19 has caused many deaths and made others sick and is, indeed, putting a huge burden on healthcare systems in many countries.
The economic and health effect of the pandemic has hit communities in different ways in many sectors, and initial research has shown that migrants and other minority or marginalised populations, for example, have become more vulnerable.
In Finland, social media platforms are used to circulate information and education among citizens; migrant groups or associations are also using social media to communicate about the disease, its safety protocols and prevention or treatment.
Many migrants, including those in the Ghanaian community, are using those channels to inform and educate their members about the disease.
Adhering to safety protocols
Ghanaian migrants and others continue to make great efforts to avoid becoming infected with the disease by adhering to the safety protocols such as social distancing, not hugging or shaking hands, wearing of masks, regularly washing of hands or using hand sanitisers, etc.
As vaccines are being administered to people, I can imagine how many Ghanaian migrants here have embraced the vaccination, which is to help control or minimise the effect of the virus on patients.
According to key health institutions and experts, vaccines are an important part of mitigating the effects of COVID-19 as they reduce the severity of the symptoms in case one becomes infected.
Some friends here and elsewhere have taken the first and second shots and are doing okay. They are so elated to have had that opportunity. They can have opportunities once they have life, and COVID-19 cannot stop them if they keep safe.
Social media, lies/misinformation, conspiracy theories
It is becoming clear that access to social media is allowing many lay people to stray into areas reserved for experts. Even people who obviously have almost zero knowledge of technical subjects of topics are communicating on the subject and claiming to know it all.
Sadly, there seems to be vaccine hesitancy in Ghana because of conspiracy theories, cynicism, ignorance, and worse of all, sheer mischief by some people. Many videos, audios and written texts paint a picture of scary outcomes should one take the vaccine.
As I wrote some time ago, some people think the vaccines brought to African countries are different from the ones being used in the Western nations; therefore, the ones brought to Africa could be dangerous and meant to depopulate the Black race. Some have even claimed without any proof that the vaccines would leave people with sexual dysfunction.
All this has resulted in doubts about efficacy of the vaccines brought to Ghana and other African countries.
Such conspiracy theories remind me about HIV/AIDS. Conspiracy theories were rife about the disease in Africa with some people claiming that HIV/AIDS had been created in laboratories in the West to kill Blacks.
Eventually, HIV/AIDS saw many infections and deaths in Ghana and other African countries. Today, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most affected region in the world with more than two-thirds (67%) of the about 35 million people living with HIV, according to the UNAIDS.
The way forward
Ghanaian migrants in Finland are generally keeping a positive mind and hoping for things to get better in the near future with the COVID-19 situation.
They are generally adhering to directives by the Finnish health authorities about COVID-19 safety protocols. They are taking the vaccines as a precaution.
I think in Ghana too, there is the need to intensify education about the vaccines to help control COVID-19.
The key stakeholders—government/institutions of state, health authorities, religious leaders, traditional authorities, non-governmental organisations, etc.— should all come in even more strongly than before to educate people in our localities. The media should be one of the leading groups in this endeavour. Thank you.
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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