3 recommandations from a Togolese to curb Covid-19

Ayawavi Attisso, a Togolese pursuing her studies in USA made 3 recommendations to curb new Coronavirus, Covid-19.  Civil engineer with 10 years experience in design, construction, and maintenance of civil infrastructures, Ayawavi Attisso urges the government to implement 3 major recommendations in order to curb the pandemic. These recommandations are made while Togo has to seriously tackle the pandemic with 39 positive cases and 2 deaths according to the statistics provided on April 2, 2020

We did not see this coming; this health crisis surprised all countries in the world. No planner or government planned for #COVID19 (for what I see). More of its effects will be noticeable in developing counties if rapid and efficient measures are not implemented.
Many #policies or programs can be implemented. My contribution as urban planner to respond to this crisis and stop the spread of the virus in my country, focus on three principal aspects: Health, Transportation and Food provision.

1- Health
How to keep the population safe and provide for adequate care to infected people is our principal concern although our health system is deficient. We propose to arrange and medically equip the halls and the #football yard of #Kegue #stadium to host the infected patients; the tents could be deployed on the game yard. We recommend that the ministry / staff of health collaborate with planners / engineers / others to run this successfully.

2- Transportation
The city #Lome is connected to Ghana by land border and to overseas by the airport, therefor the solution to stop the probable entry by these two ways is to close the border and the airport. We will encourage people to #stayhome and suspend public transportation, but in case they have to go out for any reason, we encourage them to use only their car / motorcycle / bicycle or to stay home simply

3- #Food #provision
This one could be the most difficult to implement because the groceries are not organized as in the USA, but they are rather open market places where on due dates more than 1000 people gather; also it is not common to buy things online in Togo (this aspect is worsening the situation). Let us consider the big market place of #Adidogome; we propose two strategies to reorganize the markets (this can be applied to other #marketplaces
a) First option: Reschedule the days of market animation either daily but with a small group of trade. I believe that the stands are numbered and therefore a group of numbers per day to sell; and at the same time allow the populations by zones / municipalities / districts to go shopping
b) Second option: Split the sellers in small groups and organize small market places in the surrounding public places (schools, football yards, …) to recreate the markets and reschedule the market days. And again the populations will make the purchases by zones / municipalities / districts

Note on Ayawavi Attisso:

I am Ayawavi Attisso, a civil engineer with over 10 years of experience in design, construction, and maintenance of civil infrastructures. I am currently Fulbright scholar and a fellow of the Hubert H. Humphrey at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. My major is Urban and Regional Planning. I had worked for decade in Togo and Benin. I have MS and BS in Civil Engineering from International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering, a regional institute located in Burkina Faso. I have extensive experience in both performing engineering design and construction supervision of vertical structures such as health facilities and administrative buildings. I worked with multi-disciplinary team of professionals that included environmental, social, and procurement experts as well as external project stakeholders.