Gambians Call for Better Health Emergency Preparedness Despite Government's Fair Performance in Managing Covid-19 Response

7 October 2024
Afrobarometer (Accra)
By Maame Akua Amoah Twum and Francisca Sarpong Owusu

Most citizens see distribution of pandemic-related assistance as unfair and think COVID-19 resources were lost to corruption.

Key findings

  • Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: o About one-third (32%) of Gambians said a member of their household lost a job, business, or primary source of income due to the pandemic, while 3% reported that someone in their household became ill with COVID-19 or tested positive for the virus.
  • Attitudes toward vaccines: o Half (50%) of Gambians said they had received at least one dose of a vaccine against COVID-19. o More than one-third (35%) said they were not likely to get vaccinated, including 33% who considered it "very unlikely." o Citizens who said they were unlikely to get vaccinated cited a variety of reasons for their hesitancy, including mistrust of the vaccine and worries about getting a fake or counterfeit vaccine (32%) and a belief that the COVID-19 virus doesn't exist (17%). o Gambians were evenly divided as to whether their government can be trusted to ensure the safety of COVID-19 vaccines: 50% said yes, 47% no.
  • Government response to COVID-19: o A slim majority (55%) of respondents said the government had performed "fairly well" or "very well" in managing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. o But fewer than half expressed satisfaction with the government's efforts to provide relief to vulnerable households (48%), to ensure that disruptions of children's education were held to a minimum (47%), and to ensure that health facilities were adequately resourced to deal with the pandemic (46%). o More than two-thirds (68%) said the distribution of pandemic-related assistance was handled unfairly, and three-quarters (74%) believed that "some" or "a lot" of the resources intended for the COVID-19 response were lost to corruption. o Two-thirds (67%) of citizens considered it justified to use the police or military to enforce public health mandates during a pandemic. But only minorities endorsed postponing elections (44%) and censoring the media (44%) as legitimate measures during a public health emergency.

Immediately after confirming the country's first COVID-19 case on 17 March 2020, the Gambian government suspended weekly open markets, closed its borders, and imposed bans on travel and public gatherings (APA News, 2020; Crisis 24, 2020a, b). These measures likely helped limit COVID-19 infections and deaths in the country, now totaling 12,627 and 372, respectively (World Health Organization, 2024; Lowe et al., 2021; Reuters, 2022).

Economically, the pandemic impacted the country significantly, decreasing government revenues and increasing poverty incidence by 4.8 percentage points in 2020, reversing previous gains (Touray, 2023; Darboe, 2020). In response, the government established a $14.1 million COVID-19 response fund and launched social assistance programmes (African Development Bank, 2022; International Fund for Agricultural Development, 2022; Touray, 2023).

But the pandemic highlighted health care capacity constraints, including inadequate personal protective equipment supplies (Gambia Participates, 2020), as well as challenges in providing social assistance (African Development Bank, 2021).

The management of COVID-19 resources faced significant issues, including allegations of corruption. Investigative reports and audits revealed irregularities such as inappropriate procurement processes and misappropriated emergency funds (National Audit Office, 2021).

In the most recent Afrobarometer survey, conducted in mid-2022, one-third of Gambians said that a household member had lost a job or primary source of income due to the pandemic. And while more than half received assistance from the government, most citizens said that the distribution of relief was handled unfairly and that resources intended for the COVID-19 response were lost to corruption.

Even so, a majority of citizens gave the government positive ratings for its overall response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But only half said they trust the government to ensure that vaccines are safe, and one-third said they were unlikely to try to get vaccinated.

Looking ahead, majorities saw the government as unprepared for a future public health emergency and said it should invest more in such preparations, even if it means fewer resources are available for other health services.

Maame Akua Amoah Twum Maame is the communications coordinator for North and Anglophone West Africa at Afrobarometer

Francisca Sarpong Owusu Francisca Sarpong Owusu is an assistant research analyst at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development.

Read the original article on Afrobarometer.

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