By Mariama Njie
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) country resident has called for a collective prevention against the coronavirus, while warning against second wave of the pandemic in the country.
Aissata DE was speaking during a handing over of some Personal Protective Equipment and fumigation materials, items funded by the UNDP, to some council in the country.
“This second wave of COVID-19 is a reality and we should not think that the pandemic is over instead (we should) prepare ahead for it. Now is the time to invest and take account of experience we have since March, people should continue following the preventive measures so that things will be different compare to the first wave,” she said.
She said that there should be a community engagement because fighting covid-19 is a whole society action it is not only for the government to win up the decisions but the population too should be involved.
She added that “anything UNDP do towards the community is worthy, last time we were here, to support the KMC and to extend the support to the area council in a timely matter because we all know the pandemic is still here.”
And also “At socioeconomic level we are supporting the tourism sector, we also contributed to all the policies and analysis to see to what extent The Gambia is been impacted.”
She said that they are closely working with WHO, UNFPA and all agencies especially the Ministry of Health to reinforce the health system.
In addition to that, she said they have been working with the National Environment Agency for long time and “it has been a very good partnership and we are very happy to contribute to the area councils so that they can get closer to the population as we are not leaving anyone behind.”
To her, the best way to fight the second wave is really through prevention, as all know the disease is very dangerous and now that the world is heading to end of year, people should be very aware in their end of year celebrations.