Faizel Patel – 07/06/2021
As the COVID-19 cases continue to soar in the country as it battles the third wave of the pandemic, communities have come together and taken a proactive approach in dealing with rising infections.
Many communities have been hard hit with groups of family members being infected, hospitalised, put on ventilators and also passing away with a plethora of mayyit announcements streaming in to Radio Islam International.
Two communities among others that have come to the assistance of its residents providing treatment and support to those affected by the Coronavirus are Azaadvile and Roshnee.
Radio Islam spoke to Shabeer Dabhelia, the current ward councillor for Azaadville and Mogale City & Ismail Ali from Roshnee’s COVID Response and the initiatives they have taken to assist and protect their communities from COVID-19.
Dhabelia says following the social media storm about the high number of infections in Azaadville, a number of volunteers came forward to implement measures to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“We are at this stage where we could say quite comfortably that the curve is definitely flattening in the Azaadville space. Our COVID response centre which was set up at that time has been running tirelessly for about two weeks solid and this past week has been fairly qui. So, Alhamdulillah I think for the sake of the community and all those who were involved the hard work is basically coming to an end for some reason. It has definitely bore fruit for the past three weeks.”
Dhabelia says the social media posts about Azaadville’s infections sensationalised the COVID situation.
“We were no driven by fear, but rather were driven by a type of immediate response very much like what brother Ali is saying. We were also quite prepared what we did within the first wave of the COVID. We were organised and established already, the second one was easy to manage.”
Ali says the Roshnee community anticipated that COVID-19 would impact residents daily lives and they took the necessary actions to deal with the rising infections.
“We set up a team. I don’t call them a team. I call them Allah’s soldiers because this team has been handpicked, they’ve put their lives on the line. So Alhamdulillah we started very early, before the first wave started. We were running a school, the Al Muneera School for children with learning disabilities and when the wave started we closed the school and we changed the whole school into our COVID headquarters.”
Ali says people must take the Coronavirus seriously.
“If our communities are not responsible enough and do not take this virus seriously, we are not out of the woods. I can tell you from Roshnee’s perspective, we think we are in control but every day we are testing between twelve and fifteen patients a day. “
Both Dhabelia and Ali emphasize that early response to the Coronavirus pandemic is effective in dealing with the community outbreak including easing community fears and pandemonium.
Listen to the interview with Shabbeer Dabhelia and Ismail Ali
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