Coronavirus: what it means for the poor

Imagine this - you get sick with COVID-19. But you are poor. Seriously poor.

You make about $10/day. And that’s only when you can go out and work - cleaning someone’s house, selling food or second-hand clothes on the street, or driving through a ride-sharing app. If you don’t go out, you don’t make money to feed your family. So, you’ve been going out. You’ve had no choice. That’s why you’re sick.

But you don’t have health insurance. So when you contract COVID-19 you won’t know you have it by a test, because you can’t afford to pay the bus fare (which has recently been hiked up because busses are only allowed to carry half the amount of people they used to be able to carry thanks to new regulations) to get to the hospital to get the test. And it starts out as just a cough and a slight fever, things you wouldn’t go to the hospital for anyway. But as it moves into your lungs and you have trouble breathing (because you have an underlying asthma-like condition from living in a smog-infested city your whole life) you have a choice to make. If you can’t pay a deposit or submit paperwork guaranteeing your health insurance provider (which, again, you don’t have) can pay at the hospital you won’t get treated anyway.

Now before we go any further, let’s go back to the place where you live. The slums. They’re the the only places that offer affordable housing options for someone making a few dollars a day. You haven’t been social distancing there. That has been impossible. You live closer than six feet from your neighbors on both sides and across from you. So when this virus spreads through your slum it will spread rapidly. But neither you nor any of your neighbors can do anything about it. You literally live on top of each other.

So what will happen to you? What will happen to your neighbors when this wave washes over the population of Kenya?

It’s likely many will die. But not necessarily because hospitals are overrun. They may eventually be overrun by the middle and upper class if we don’t slow the curve. But the more likely reality here for those who live on dollars a day like my example above is that they won't ever even get tested and they will die without any treatment at all. The sad truth is that many people here contract treatable diseases all the time and they die because they can’t pay for the treatment.

And there’s another sad possibility: the government here could possibly seal off the slums. They could force slum-dwellers to stay in the slum in the name of “quarantine”. But that will mean everyone in the slums will be left to contract COVID-19 and deal with it on their own. No ventilators, no hospitals, no real treatment of any kind for those who need it.

So, will you join us in praying for our friends in the slums - the least of these who need a miracle to avoid the disastrous consequences of this thing?

Will you also consider a small donation to help some of these people? We are being asked continually for help already. Many people have lost the only form of income they had due to the social distancing orders. Restaurants are closed, bus fares are too expensive for people to get from place to place, there’s now a 7pm curfew and we’re waiting for the “stay home” orders to come any day. If people can’t go out, they can’t make money to feed their families. Just $10 will buy flour and vegetables to feed a family for a few days. If you would like to give or learn more, just send us an email: kjandre@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading. We’ll keep you posted as this all progresses from this side of the globe.