8 APRIL 2020 CORONAVIRUS UPDATE "Good evening Elspeth, I believe all is well. Please find attached photos for the soap distribution. I decided to get the white star soap since it weighs a kilogram. Each patient received a bar of soap plus the nurses who were on duty today. They were so happy and those are some of the photos taken. We also had 24 dettol tablets for nurses to wash hands and omo power for cleaning the ward." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An excerpt from Harriet's email this morning ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Greetings from I and my Lovely Sarah. we are so happy for your concern in our lives and your passionate love for the people of Kumi. Sorry for the delay to respond to your email, I have been home for 3 days now. I will be resuming to work on monday We are okay here in Kumi Uganda. We are also happy that you and chris are fine too. Yes, we are in a lock down for 14 days, thereafter the president will decide for the next move, and this has led inincrease of prices, for example the price of salt used to be UGX 600 only has now increased to 2500 and others have also increased in the same line. However, there are privileges of one person riding a motorcycle to go to town. They do not restrict that. I have also been going to town on my own while riding a motorcycle. It's true the Ministry of Health has advised washing hands for 20 seconds with good soap in order to kill the virus. Kumi hospital has purchased few taps made out of Jericans and we are yet fabricating more at the garage, the ones purchased are woking pretty good. These taps have been put in front of every ward/ unit, including at the Hospital gate there is one tap The hospital also tries to pour liquid soap and jik into the jericans so as to act as soap but sometimes these two detergents can be out of stock or are less concentrated, cannot even form foam which would kill the virus, of which good bar soap would do the magic properly. At times having bar soap is also much better but the hospital has not purchased bars soap. Yes, it is possible for me to go to town and purchase the soap. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From my dear young friend, Dan. 7 April 2020 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No need for me to add further but to say thank you and thank you again to all who kindly donated so generously to our request for soap for the patients and staff of Kumi Hospital. £683.00 has been raised to date and here is my dear leprosy patient on Ojikhan Ward receiving her bar and, no doubt, (ululating) ie singing to thank God and you for this precious commodity which we take for granted.. I am hoping to keep up the distributions as, of course, one bar will not last forever and so we continue to ask you to support these people who "are terrified" of the virus reaching the hospital. One further piece of news is that earlier this week the locusts returned for a second time. I received a movie clip which was long as it took a while for them to fly over.. I don't know if they settled to devour the crops.