Global Health Crisis: The Microeconomic and Socio-Dynamic Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction

Healthy living is an important livelihood asset of high value to every individual and the larger human society; because it underscores the active engagement of any individual or group of individuals in any social and economic endeavor. It is a non-material wealth that is acquired and maintained through the cultivation of behaviors that guarantees the mental soundness and physical fitness of individuals at all times. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada – PHAC (n.d.), healthy living, concerning individuals, is the practice of health-enhancing behaviors that build physical, mental, and spiritual capacity to make choices or actively engaged in social and economic functions. By extension, healthy living by individuals would reflect a healthy society. Hence, healthy living concerning the larger society refers to practices by the population groups that are consistent with supporting, improving, maintaining and/or enhancing good health conditions. Such health supporting practices or behaviors primarily center on hygiene practices, daily and regular consumption of good and nutritious food, and physical activities. In Africa, where access to good and nutritious food remains a challenge, particularly among the poor households (FAO, 1998; Sasson, 2012; Dodo, 2020; FAO, 2020), which constitutes the largest population of the content, hygiene practice is well recognized and promoted through cultural communication and much more in the school system. In songs and folklores is an emphasis on the need for daily and regular bathing, laundry of clothes, sweeping of the environment, and good handling of food for safe consumption. Further to this are the dictums – health is wealth; cleanliness is next to godliness, and hygiene practices override all forms of illnesses. Based on this many efforts are made to ensure hygiene practice and healthy living in Africa, especially among the elites and urban dwellers.

This notwithstanding, ill-health seems inevitable among the human society as individuals sometimes or occasionally contend with one form of disease or the other. A disease is generally caused by a variety of pathogenic organics or disease-causing organisms, which exist in five groups – viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and helminths. These pathogens pervade man’s environment and as such exist in the air, water, soil, food, surfaces, even in humans and other living organisms that may serve as hosts. In essence, humans could readily and unknowingly get in contact with the pathogens thereby becoming pre-dispose to infectious diseases. The pathogens however need to gain entry into the human body and establish a site of infection for disease to occur (Janeway Jr et al., 2001). The pathogens which may be intracellular or extracellular, depending on their mechanism of replications, could gain entry into the body through the epithelial surface, which may be the skin or internal mucosal surfaces of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urogenital tracts, eyes, mouth wound, or bite that breach the skin barrier (The National Academies, n.d.). Adhering to the epithelial surface, the pathogens penetrate the body tissues for replications and secretion of toxins that may spread to other parts of the body system and as such begin to cause deterioration of the body cells with significant signs as symptoms of a particular disease. In essence, different pathogens or infectious organisms cause markedly different diseases with definite symptoms by which the diverse damaged tissues are manifested. In today’s world, there are arrays of diseases impinging on the health status of human society with consequential health and socioeconomic implications.