Survivors recount battle with COVID-19 (Youtube video link)

Created Date

July 14, 2020 - 5:15am

Contributed date

July 14, 2020 - 5:56am

Critical Commentary

A Kenyan television station - Citizen TV - tells the story of two COVID-19 survivors, both leaders in church and politics respectively. The two separately are largely left to share accounts of the symptoms (e.g. losing appetite, having a cold, or like having many diseases together - pneumonia, bad flu, malaria), the medical treatment and advice they received (e.g. 'sleep on your belly to open your lungs'), the seriousness of their condition (one spent 4 days in intensive care while the other spent 5 days), their path to recovery (e.g. being able to leave their bed and walk normally, being able to breathe normally), the outcomes (e.g. one said his wife and one child tested positive, stigma, being accused of faking illness), and said stigmatising patients was unwarranted. 

Both indicated they were not sure how/where they contracted the virus. The political leader was required to pay Sh. 2.5 million shillings, with insurance declining to pay but support coming from the political party he serves. 

The TV story provides first-hand account of getting and surviving the disease, the steep costs (financial and physical), and the effects (stigma, infecting others). A quote from one of the survivors: "COVID is not a death sentence and therefore you shouldn't stigmatise people."

Source

Citizen TV - YouTube channel

Language

English

Cite as

Anonymous, 14 July 2020, "Survivors recount battle with COVID-19 (Youtube video link)", contributed by , Research Data Share, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 14 July 2020, accessed 29 March 2024. https://www.researchdatashare.org/content/survivors-recount-battle-covid-19-youtube-video-link-0