“Water A Critical Weapon To Fight Pandemic”

This is the right time to accelerate efforts to ensure universal access to safe water and sanitation

- Dhesigen Naidoo

We are in the throes of an unprecedented global pandemic, perhaps unexpectedly with a variant of a virus we collectively contained and managed in the SARS epidemic of 2002-2004. This new SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, has thrown the world into a storm, with no corner on Earth unaffected. Its impact has already been severe on the social, political, economic, security and health fronts. Our anxiety for personal and collective safety has risen to understandably high levels. Our governments are investing in war-like strategies such as lockdowns and total isolation to flatten the infections curve and maintain the numbers with levels that our mostly fragile, and under-resourced, health systems can manage. I write this when South Africa’s infections have climbed above the 1,000 mark and we have recorded our first COVID-19-related death. Dark times!