This week, we talk to Former Director of the Health Services at the Ministry of Health Dr Vasantrao Gujadhur about the sanitary situation in Mauritius and its implications on the economy. We also delve into politics and for the first time hear Dr Gujadhur’s frank views on the political situation.
Dr Gujadhur, first you were present in our homes every day and then you disappeared…Then, we saw you again at the protest. What exactly happened? Did you go into hibernation?
No, I carried on with my work. I just kept a low profile. When you are a civil servant, your superiors and the politicians take the decisions. So at that time, I did what I had to do and I was satisfied with my work but maybe others were not satisfied. So I was not called to the forefront again and I stayed back.
Why were you asked to no longer participate in the daily briefings of the Covid committee?
I don’t know and I never asked why. I just carried on with my work.
Were you not disappointed? Your work is also to inform the population of the dangers and keep us abreast of what is going on as you did during the lockdown, isn’t it?
Of course I was disappointed!
Were you also disappointed that you could no longer insult people by calling them ‘Cocovid’?
(Laughs) No, I wasn’t insulting them but there was information I had to get through and I did get it through. With minimal resources and minimal technology, we, at the Health Ministry, focussed on public health and precautionary measures. There was no medicine, no vaccine, no cure so the only thing I knew worked were precautionary measures.
At any cost? Even if you have to call us Cocovid?
The first thing in communication is to speak to people in a language that they understand. So I went straight to the point and I hit straight. And it worked.
And now we are Covid free or Covid safe thanks to the prime minister, isn’t it?
You know, for me to reach this stage of no-contamination, different groups of people worked to make it happen. The greatest amount of work was done as from the second week of January by my staff in the public health. That is when we started working on Coronavirus. Public health is about protecting people. We started working on the virus situation when there were still very few cases in Wuhan. That is when we started the quarantine system. The other thing is contact tracing. We have the best system in Africa. We managed to trace more than 75% of the cases through contact tracing. And the more cases you detect, the more you prevent transmission and you decrease infection in the community. The early lockdown also helped in cutting down the chain of transmission. But for me, the biggest credit goes to the public. Confinement was very difficult, particularly for the lower strata of our society but people did cooperate and managed to protect each other. So the success of the Mauritian story is the action taken by the public.
Did the public have a choice, considering the fines and threats of imprisonment?
Look at what happened elsewhere. People fought with the police and refused to confine. Over here, I explained to them exactly what their responsibility was, what I expected of them and what would be the end result. They are literate and intelligent so they listened, understood and sacrificed their freedom because they knew that at the end, they would gain. So they confined, we carried on with our contact tracing and with all this, we managed to contain the virus.
We still lost 10 people. Isn’t that unfortunate?
It is very unfortunate and I am very sad and saddened for the families and the country. Covid19 is a new disease which can manifest itself as mild, severe or critical. Unfortunately, there were a few severe and critical cases of which 10 passed away in spite of all the treatment given. I feel very sad about it and sympathise with the families.
“During the confinement, I was literally begging the population to stay at home with some even forgoing their daily income. Now, I have come to know that during the same confinement, companies were being awarded huge contracts. Some without even having the capital required.”
But shouldn’t we at least stop bragging about our success story when we lost lives we perhaps should never have lost?
Covid-19 was a new disease so we had no idea how to deal with it. There was nothing in the books. And the virus was not behaving the same way with everyone. Some people were getting very sick, for others there were no symptoms…I know of cases of about 80 years old who got the disease and came out of it unscathed. Today we know it also depends on the viral load, the immune system etc. as a point of comparison, in Reunion, they lost 47 people; in the Seychelles, they lost eight lives for a much smaller population.
When you compare us to Reunion and the Seychelles, you are not exactly comparing like with like. There, they lost lives after they re-opened their borders. Here we are closed to everyone who is not prepared to quarantine for two full weeks. Do you agree with that?
Yes. Last year, Reunion was doing better than Mauritius. There were no deaths, they had only around 400 cases, so all was well. But then foreigners started coming in with no restrictions, not even a PCR test! Today, there are many community cases and the new variant also reached their shores. In the Seychelles, it is a similar situation. No restrictions until it was too late.
But is the 14-day quarantine necessary? I mean, couldn’t it be halved without endangering the health of the population?
No, because there are cases that appear even on day 14.
