2020/06/08 by John Stephen Kayode, Asha Embrandiri, Kayode, John Stephen +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Environmental Science · Mathematics · #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts #COVID-19 impact on air quality #COVID-19 epidemiological studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.04468
The fear of the invisible but prevalent Coronavirus (COVID-19), disease\ncannot be overemphasized since there is the potential possibility of it wiping\nout the entire world population within a few months if adequate and quick steps\nare not taken to curb this menace, and the sub-Saharan African (SSAn) region is\nno exception. It is evident that water, as an essential daily commodity, has\nlong been in a state of emergency in SSAn nations, which is largely attributed\nto decades of neglect by the successive governments, because it has not been\npossible to separate the existing bond between water, health, livelihood and\nthe economy. The laudable Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) proposed by the\nUnited Nations had yet to achieve the stated objective of improving the\nstandards of living and health conditions of the rural communities in the SSAn\nregion before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. This failure has been masked by a\nsort of delusion in which the people of this region are subjected to the\nhardship of searching for clean and healthy water in their own ponds, rivers,\nstreams and shallow hand-dug local wells on a continuous basis. Less than 17%\nof the rural population in all the SSAn communities can access basic\nhand-washing facilities and sanitation systems. The total water productivity,\nas measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per cubic meter of total\nfreshwater withdrawn, for the people was less than 5 GDP.\n