[imagesource: Reuters / Jeanty Junior Augustin]

The latest stats show that the Caribbean country of Haiti has 958 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and just 27 deaths.

When compared to other countries, that appears to be a job well done, but the worst may be yet to come.

Different countries hit their peaks at different times, as South Africans are well aware, and Haiti has seen numbers more than quintuple in the past two weeks.

In response, reports the Daily Maverick, “Haiti’s voodoo leaders have trained priests of the Afro Caribbean religion to concoct a secret remedy for the novel coronavirus”.

With Western medicine expensive and in short supply, and voodoo practiced by an estimated 50% of Haiti’s 11 million people, the country could see the number of infections continue to spike:

Ever since the first cases of the new coronavirus were confirmed in Haiti in mid-March, Voodoo priests have been serving up teas with ingredients including moringa, eucalyptus, ginger and honey to strengthen the immune system.

“We live in a country where the health system is not able to respond to the challenge of the pandemic, so we rely on natural remedies instead,” said Mambo Lamercie Charles as she ladled out potion. “I consider my temple a clinic”.

Voodoo deputy leader Euvonie Georges Auguste said the community, inspired by the “Loas” (spirits), has also come up with a potion for COVID-19 symptoms that they had taught priests virtually to prepare and administer.

On the plus side, the country has around 1 000 temples equipped with “Djèvo”, the “sacred chamber used for initiation rituals”, which could allow for positive coronavirus cases to be isolated.

There is no right and wrong approach that can be universally applied (what approach does or doesn’t work in Sweden can’t simply be applied in South Africa with the expectation of similar results, for example), but I would be worried if the country I lived in turned to voodoo, rather than science, to fight this global pandemic.

Then again, how is that stranger than praying to any deity for help?

Haitian Voodoo “Ati” or supreme leader Carl Henri Desmornes to finish, with the sort of message that has made #WeAreTheVirus so popular on social media:

…Desmornes [below] said maybe the pandemic carried a message for the world – one difference between voodoo and Western medicine is that it seeks meaning in illness. Perhaps it was a warning sign, Desmornes said, that humans were like a virus to other beings on earth.

Reuters / Jeanty Junior Augustin

“My hope is that after corona … instead of transforming all we touch, transforming nature, we look instead to live in harmony with it,” he said.

Sadly, I don’t see that happening.

Read the rest of the Daily Maverick article here.

[source:dailymaverick]