Role of WOMEN during COVID-19 Pandemic

By Dr. Rasanjalee Abeywickrama

Chairperson- Sri Lanka–United Nations Friendship Organization-Women’s Platform

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered corona virus. Most people infected with this virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.  Older people, and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness. .

Considering the pandemic nature of this deadly virus, drastic actions in each country and collective actions in globally are needed to control and eradicate this virus. Most importantly this virus reminds us of an old saying ‘prevention is better than the cure’. In this regard women have an important role to play.

The best way to prevent and slow down transmission is to be well informed about the COVID-19 virus, and how it spreads. It could rapidly spread via micro droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or exhales, via gastrointestinal track, and mucous membranes via contaminated fingers. These droplets are too heavy to hang in the air, and quickly fall on floors or surfaces. A person can be infected by breathing in the virus if he/she is within close proximity of someone who has COVID-19, or by touching a contaminated surface and then eyes, nose or mouth.

We are now facing a third wave of this COVID-19 spread as a country, and as per records this time it has become serious than the first two waves. The latest reports show that the virus concentration of patients reported this time are much higher than previous cases. As women we can take many steps to control/prevent the occurrence of this pandemic.

Considering the family unit, mother always cares for the whole family. Women can start up from there, as she needs to make sure that the family unit is safe from this disease and this way a community will be safe, country will be safe and it helps even to reduce number of patients affected with COVID -19 globally.

It is extremely important to see that all the members of the family follow procedures recommended by health authorities. Among these are wearing a face mask when going out, regularly and thoroughly cleaning hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or with soap and water, maintaining at least one meter (3 feet) distance between others and avoid going to crowded places.

It is very important that the mother provides a balanced diet to the family all the time as a balanced diet with adequate nutrients and healthful lifestyle leads and sustains wellness. We all are blessed with an immune system which is working as our guard to protect us from disease-causing organisms such as viruses, bacteria etc. Therefore, it is obvious that if we can have an optimally functioning immune system, we have a higher power to combat with these infections and the same applies with COVID -19 as well. We can strengthen our immune system by having required nutrients in our diet. According to many research publications several vitamins and micro nutrients strengthen the innate immune systems. Among the vitamins are Vitamins D, C, and K.  Getting exposed to sunlight is the best way to help the body produce enough vitamin D. This vitamin is also found in fatty fish, such as salmon, mackerel, and tuna, egg yolk, cheese, mushroom, fortified milk, etc. Fresh fruits mainly, those of the citrus group (eg, orange, lime) guava are good sources of Vitamin C. Green leafy vegetables are good sources of Vitamin K. Micro nutrients such as zinc, magnesium and selenium are considered to increase the immunity level. These are found in green leaves, sesame, egg york, small fish, etc. Those mothers, who have kids refusing home foods, try to present these in different methods and somehow add these important nutrients to their meals,. Inclusion of these vitamins and minerals in the food can help to increase immunity in your family unit and in the same way we can increase the herd immunity. While providing foods which will increase the immunity it is also important that the food items including rice, vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, etc. are thoroughly washed.

It is also very important that we as women educate the family members about the importance of the intake of water especially at this time. It will be helpful to improve the immunity of the family members and keep them hydrated. Especially kids who do not t like to drink much water need to be somehow convinced and the required amount of water needs to be drunk during each day. It is important that the water is pure and potable. Since kids are at home due to closure of schools, mothers can easily work on these facts and supply them with proper amount of water and also nutritious food which will enable those at home to combat this virus.

It is also a fact that the chances of getting infected with this virus are more among people who do smoke and/or consume alcohol. Therefore as women need to educate/convince men in the family to avoid smoking and/or consuming alcohol at least during the pandemic or better during their life time.

The other important role which can be played by women is being teachers at home and do home schooling in the way they can. Home schooling became a popular topic during this lockdown where most of the time parents specially mothers were trying to teach kids at home. The best part of this is that, being mothers they also were able to identify talents, capabilities and capacities of their own kids and kids have more time to spend with parents rather than running to a number of tuition classes. During this time women can explain most of those important life lessons and pair up with them to do educational activities at home

Also this pandemic opened doors for women empowerment;. Many women have started to identify their challenges and are now trying to make some earnings, which is really a good trend. Each woman has different capabilities, so it is ideal at this point that if they can make use of these to build up the financial sustainability in the family. That can also lead to help in bringing down mental instability of population especially men due to lack of finances to manage families during this pandemic.