‘This Is Heartbreaking, The Whole Village Calls Us Corona’

What on earth would justify entire villagers stigmatising a single family and calling its members corona, in allusion to the ravaging COVID-19 disease?

But that is exactly what is currently happening to a family, and rather than take it anymore, the members are calling on the authorities to do something to leave their name and reputation intact.

Their spokesman, Meisie Segalo sees no justification for the sigmatisation, not even the fact that the family experienced two funerals recently.

The woman, from Motswedi village in the North West region of Ghana lost a brother three weeks ago, and her aunt who attended the funeral from Botswana died of coronavirus not long after.

And in the conclusion of the villagers, coronavirus may have taken over the family, and so they began distancing themselves from the family, and those who attended the funeral, a report monitored from Daily Sun informs.

“This is heartbreaking. The whole village calls us Corona. It’s very painful.

We need our name to be cleared because we do not have corona,” she said.

According to Segalo, post mortem of her aunt in Botswama stated that she died due to Asthma and does not understand how Coronavirus was linked to her death.

The woman expressed her devastation during a launch of provincial roll out of mass screening, testing and tracing  of the virus at the village.

The Eagle understands that a medical team visited the family of Segalo in Motswedi where the funeral was held.

A team member however explained that they were only tracing the people who were in contact with the deceased not to say that the family had the virus.

He explained that his department received the report about the woman from the Botswana government.

“Its not the issue of the family it’s the issue of the contacts. Family must not be accused that they have corona.

We were making sure that Motswedi people must not hesitate and say people here has corona,” the visiting member said.

A resident Aaron Gaedume 41 was happy to be coronavirus free after he was screened.

He said coughing was no longer a normal thing as people now associated it with the virus. “I was used to people coughing and it was normal.  I am happy that I am cleared of the virus,” he said.