WHAT COVID-19 LOOKS LIKE IN RWANDA

April 17, 2020

Waiting hours in line for water, gathering enough food for one small meal every day or two, basic illnesses going untreated, thus becoming worse because of overwhelmed healthcare systems and the constant fear of spreading COVID-19 is now daily life in Rwanda.  Like most countries in the world right now, Rwanda is in quarantine.  It’s necessary because in Africa everything is communal and if the disease were to begin to spread rapidly like other places, it could kill more people than any other place on the planet.

To make matters worse, the majority of the population in Rwanda lives on less than $5 a day, which makes a pandemic like COVID-19 catastrophic.  Take the families of the children in our sponsorship program, for example.  These children receive weekly assistance from our program, but now the entire family is in crisis. Mothers, fathers and even grandparents who were already doing all they could to provide food are now without the means to supply the basic necessities for themselves and the rest of their children. As long as it continues, those we work within the villages are in great danger of severe malnutrition and even death by starvation.

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