President Lazarus Chakwera says the Tonse Alliance government will not tolerate attacks on health personnel in the country.
The development comes after revelations that some community members from Mchinji beat up an ambulance driver and health workers on their duty to bury a person who died of Covid-19.
The angry community members alleged their fellow did not die of Covid-19 and demanded that they wanted follow all procedures in burying their fellow, a situation which forced the health workers to return with the dead body to Mchinji District Hospital mortuary.
The pandemonium forced the heath care workers to return the body to the mortuary.
This came a week after villagers in Zomba district in southern Malawi chased away health care workers who had come to bury a COVID-19 victim.
They too claimed that their loved one died of other illnesses, not Covid-19, and demanded to bury the body themselves.
Speaking during a national address on the war against Covid-19 at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe, Chakwera said the health workers do not deserve such harsh treatment from the communities they are serving because they are frontline soldiers in the Covid-19 fight.
Condemning the act, Chakwera said the health workers should be hailed for the role they are playing in protecting the communities from contracting Covid-19.
“I must strongly condemn the recent beating of ambulance drivers and health personnel during their routine delivery of the remains of those who died of Covid-19. It is to the credit of our health workers that we are able to bury those who die of Covid-19 in a way that does not expose the living to infection. It is also to their credit that we take comfort in the recovery of 2,861 people in the past week. No attack on our health personnel will be tolerated,” said Chakwera.
During the national address, the President also encouraged Malawians to continue adhering to Covid-19 preventive measures which he said helping in the fight against the pandemic.
Shouts Simeza is chairperson for the Human Resources for Health Coalition.
He says if the attacks continue, the health care workers will refuse to bury any more bodies.
“Because of harassment and abuse, we always leave in fear,” Simeza said. “If the situation continues, all of us heath care workers, we will withdraw ourselves from the service of escorting the remains of our brothers and sisters in the communities.”
Families have argued they see no reason they can’t bury Covid-19 victims after health care workers disinfect the bodies. They say they believe the body is safe from coronavirus after disinfection.
But Simeza says the health care workers are only following guidelines on how to bury the victims of Covid-19.
“The guidelines still demand that the health workers should support in escorting and burying of remains for safety of the public,” Simeza said, “So, the direction now is to work on the guidelines, what we have at hand; review them. For that to be carried out, we will need to involve community so that they can appreciate the scourge.”
In the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts warned that dead bodies were infectious, like bodies of those killed by the Ebola virus.
More recently, however, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a burial guide that said, “it is believed there is little risk of getting Covid-19 from a dead body.”
The guide said the coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, spreads mainly through droplets produced when a person coughs, sneezes or talks.
Malawi has seen a surge in COVID-19 cases since November.
Health authorities put the current average number of daily infections at 300 cases compared to 10 during the first wave of the pandemic.
