CNA Staff, Apr 17, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- A Catholic priest is one of two people in Kenya to be charged with “negligently spreading an infectious disease” after authorities allege he did not comply with quarantine regulations after he traveled to the country from Italy. 

Fr. Richard Onyango Oduor denied the allegations on Thursday, April 16, and is currently free after he posted bail. He will appear in court on May 2, after he spends another 14 days in quarantine. 

According to Kenyan media, Fr. Oduor is based in Rome and flew to the country to preside at a relative’s burial service. At that burial service, he distributed the Eucharist, interacting with several people. According to local media reports, as many as 60 people who came into contact with Fr. Oduor reported to the hospital, but it is unclear how many of them were eventually diagnosed with COVID-19. 

Fr. Oduor eventually tested positive for the virus, was hospitalized for a period of two weeks, and has since recovered. He was arrested on April 9, immediately after he was released from the hospital. 

Oduor reportedly traveled throughout Kenya from March 11 through 20, and was unaware that he had been infected with the coronavirus. During this period. Oduor took busses and a plane, and celebrated several Masses. 

Kenyan officials were able to locate and quarantine more than 130 people who had come into contact with Oduor before he was diagnosed with the coronavirus. This number includes priests at a parish in Nairobi where Oduor stayed before traveling to his hometown for the burial.

Archbishop Anthony Muheria, who leads the Archdiocese of Nyeri and is the apostolic administrator for the Diocese of Kitui, declined to comment about the case to Reuters, and said it was up to civil authorities to handle Oduor’s case. 

Kenya has banned public gatherings, reduced the number of people who are permitted to attend a funeral, instituted a curfew, and increased restrictions on who can travel to areas that have the highest number of cases.

In Kenya, 234 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 11 have died. 

Oduor was arrested on the same day Gideon Saburi, the deputy governor of Kilifi, a county in Kenya, was charged with spreading coronavirus. Saburi is alleged to have appeared in public while suffering from the virus between March 6 and March 22. He has also pleaded not guilty and was released on April 16 after posting bail.

Rome Newsroom, Apr 22, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- For Iraqi Christian and Yazidi communities still recovering from the destruction wreaked by the Islamic State, the coronavirus poses significant risks, NGOs have said in a joint statement. 

“The public health system in Sinjar and the wider Nineveh Governorate was decimated by ISIS during its brutal occupation and genocidal campaign in Iraq, beginning in 2014,” the letter stated.

“An impending humanitarian and security disaster looms large in Iraq. … There is a significant attendant threat to global security if ISIS uses this opportunity to regroup and return, but it does not have to be this way. Iraqi authorities and the United Nations must act now,” it continued.

Twenty-five NGOs working in northern Iraq issued a joint statement April 16 calling on the World Health Organization to undertake an assessment mission in the area, where testing has been limited, and urging Iraqi authorities to prevent the Islamic State from regrouping.

Signed by the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, Free Yezidi Foundation, Genocide Alert, and the Religious Freedom Institute, the statement described how the pandemic is exacerbating existing security, humanitarian, and health risks among displaced and rebuilding Iraqi minority communities. It highlighted, in particular, the global risk of a potential resurgence of the Islamic State.

Security threat

“COVID-19 and the precipitous drop in oil prices have caused the Iraqi economy to collapse, leaving a dangerous security vacuum for ISIS to exploit. Indeed, the resultant political turmoil and social strife recall the very conditions that earlier incarnations of ISIS and its supporters capitalized on during its initial surge almost a decade ago,” it stated.

“According to International Crisis Group, ISIS in its weekly newsletter Al-Naba called on its fighters to attack and weaken its enemies while they are distracted by the pandemic,” it added.

U.S. military officials have expressed concern that the Islamic State could use adverse conditions to its advantage in it recruitment efforts.

“COVID-19 has also hastened the departure of some coalition forces from Iraq, weakening counter-terrorism operations, while some ISIS detainees have recently escaped prison in Syria,” the letter stated.

On March 30, Islamic State fighters imprisoned in northwestern Syria revolted. The rioting prisoners took over one wing of the prison before Kurdish forces intervened.

“There is an urgent need for reform in the civilian security sector, in order to integrate regional militias into a unified Federal Police that upholds the rule of law and protects all citizens, regardless of religion or clan affiliation,” the letter said.

Health infrastructure needs

The economic strain has also hindered Iraqi minorities’ efforts to rebuild their communities, including medical infrastructure needs.

“Many Yazidis (Ezidis/Yezidis) want to return to Sinjar, but security, reconstruction and basic services are still lacking to allow a dignified return. There are currently only two hospitals and just one ventilator to assist the current population of around 160,000 people in the region,” the NGOs’ statement explained.

Iraq’s healthcare system, which has suffered for decades from the effects of sanctions and war, currently faces a critical shortage of doctors and medicine, according to a Reuters investigation. Hospitals in Iraq are already overcrowded and doctors overworked, while the healthcare situation is slightly better in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which has its own health ministry.

There have been at least 1,600 cases of COVID-19 documented in Iraq, which is under pressure to reopen its border with Iran, which has had more than 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

Humanitarian workers have also had trouble reaching those in need due to movement restrictions, and have raised concerns about the risk of an outbreak in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

Social distancing is very difficult in these high-density IDP camps in Iraq, where 1.8 million people remain displaced due to insecurity and reconstruction needs, according to the UN.

The 25 NGOs called for the government of Iraq and the United Nations to provide testing capacity in the IDP camps in Sinjar, Tel Afar and the Nineveh Plains.

“At present, it is impossible to apprehend the extent of the spread of the virus because no testing for the disease is taking place in the camps, while restrictions of movement impede the work of humanitarian actors who provide basic essentials such as food, water and medicine,” they stated.

Psychological risk for trauma survivors

Genocide survivors with trauma also face increased personal risk of psychological harm amid isolation imposed by coronavirus measures.

As in much of the world, authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan have ordered people to stay home, imposed a curfew, and have closed places of worship, schools, restaurants, and most businesses. 

“Another alarming corollary of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iraq is the psychological impact on at-risk communities, including Yazidis, Turkmen and Christians, such as Assyrians,” it said.

This is a particular concern for the Yazidi communities in which thousands of women were victims of sexual violence by the Islamic State.

“Prior to the outbreak, Médecins Sans Frontières reported on a debilitating mental health crisis among Yazidis in Iraq, including a rising number of suicides,” it stated.

Suicides in this community have already been reported since social distancing measures were put into place, the NGOs reported. They called on the World Health Organization to address this “acute mental health crisis.”

In their appeal to the WHO and Iraqi government, the NGOs insisted that the stakes were high: 

“COVID-19 is a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen before. Survivors of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes are now waiting for this silent death to pass through the camps and their homes, unable to fight back.”

Nairobi, Kenya, May 3, 2020 / 06:01 am (CNA).- At a one-room house outside Nairobi, a 23-year-old girl with disabilities claps her hands and throws herself at Sr. Rose Catherine Wakibiru, who has been visiting girls with disability at their homes since the Kenyan government closed schools last month over coronavirus.

The girl, referred to as Faith, “is deaf and dumb,” Sr. Rose Catherine of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi, told ACI Africa April 27. “She is autistic and has cerebral palsy and so she doesn’t know anything about social distancing. She has pure love in her heart and she can’t stop embracing people to show how happy she is.”

Faith lived at Limuru Cheshire Home along with 60 other girls who have physical or intellectual disabilities, before the pandemic.

Sr. Rose Catherine, administrator of the home, called the girls’ parents and guardians to retrieve their children when schools were closed. 

“Most parents we called were not ready to pick their girls,” Sr. Rose Catherine said, adding that many girls at Cheshire home are drawn from poor backgrounds and that most come from informal settlements around Nairobi.

The nun explained that Faith initially lived with her mother and three siblings in a Nairobi slum, but they moved to another settlement “three weeks ago when their house was washed away in floods.”

When their house was washed away, Faith’s mother gave out her children to different well-wishers and looked for a place to stay herself. Later, friends helped her to get a single-roomed house where she stays with her three children and goes out to look for menial jobs to sustain her family.

Such jobs are hard to come by amid the restrictions due to coronavirus, and the family may be thrown out of their home as the mother is unable to pay for it.

Sr. Rose Catherine said five residents of the Cheshire home were taken in by other families, as they had nowhere to go.

“I know all [the] families that have their daughters here and I have an idea of those that can accommodate a girl [who] isn’t their own. So when I made those calls, I would ask a parent if they were willing to take care of an extra girl. That’s how I got all the five girls a place to stay,” said Sr. Rose Catherine.

To ease the burden of the foster parents, Limuru Cheshire Home supplies the girls with basic necessities such as food, soap, and sanitary materials in their new homes.

Some families were reluctant to have their daughters back home, and Sr. Rose Catherine said the biggest challenge for girls with disabilities and their families during coronavirus is poverty.

Most of the families “live on daily wages, and with their girls around they can’t go out and work as they used to. All the girls at the facility are special needs cases and they need someone to look after them” at all times, the nun said.

The girls also come last in families that grapple with lack of basic needs, such as food. When there is little food to share, children with disabilities do not get any of it, Sr. Rose Catherine reported.

“I have been to a home where I found my girl watching her siblings eat. When I asked her brother why her sister wasn’t eating anything, he said there was very little food in the house,” Sr. Rose Catherine recounted. “Children with disabilities are treated as second-rate individuals. People only think about them when everybody else has had their fill.”

Many of the girls’ families have asked the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi for help since having the girls returned to their care, and Sr. Rose Catherine has made at least eight home visits in recent weeks.

On each home visit, families are supplied with food, masks, and sanitizer.

“What we have at the moment is only enough to keep the families going for one more week, yet we have outreach plans for next week. We can only plan and hope that well-wishers will come on board to touch the lives of these vulnerable girls and their families,” Sr. Rose Catherine said.

 

A version of this story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA's African news partner. It has been adapted by CNA.

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