By Kemo Cham
Freetown mayor, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, was among 45 mayors and heads of city councils across the world who shared their experiences dealing with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
The city leaders from over 30 countries participated in the mayoral webinar on March 27 which offered those presiding over cities with less impact of the disease to learn from those experiencing the brunt of the epidemic.
Among the mayors who participated are those from cities worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the Mayor of Milan (Italy), Giuseppe Sala, who is also the Vice-Chair of C40; the Mayor of Madrid (Spain), José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and Mayor of London (UK), Sadiq Khan.
Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles in the United States and chair of C40 Cities, hosted the meeting.
Spain and Italy are two of the countries most affected by the epidemic.
A statement from the C40 Cities Network, which organized the online meeting, said it was intended to give mayors the opportunity to share valuable lessons with each other, regarding how to face the virus’ challenge.
“C40 Cities has committed to use the connections between the world’s major cities built over 15 years of collaboration against the climate crisis, to help cities respond to the COVID-19 crisis. C40 is working closely with its member cities to provide whatever support and resources it can to help them save lives and protect livelihoods,” the statement reads in part.
Discussions covered city-level containment measures, responding to the most vulnerable, particularly in the event of lockdowns, maintenance of council operations as well as preparation of frontline staff.
The Freetown City Council said Mayor Aki-Sawyerr, one of about nine mayors and city leaders who addressed the meeting, explained how lessons learnt from the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak had informed planning for Freetown, while outlining the measures that had been introduced to date. She also discussed how FCC was collaborating with communities to attempt to address these issues.
When the meeting was held, Sierra Leone was the only country in West Africa that hadn’t recorded any case of the virus, and the government was struggling to keep the situation that way.
But on Tuesday the situation changed after the country announced its first case.
President Julius Maada Bio broke the news at State House in an emergency press conference.
Under a state of emergency, Sierra Leone has shut down its airport to international flights and closed its land borders with its neighbors Guinea and Liberia, among many other measures.
FCC is working with the government to implement these interventions. Among other measures, the council has imposed restriction on time of trading for petty traders.
In the event of a lockdown, Freetown will be the most difficult place to deal with for the government. Part of the reason for this, as highlighted by the Freetown mayor to her peers, include overcrowded informal settlements and inadequate water supply. “The main preventative measures, hand washing and social distancing, are extremely challenging to effectively implement in a densely populated city of 1.2m when 47% of the population do not have access to running water and 35% live in severely overcrowded informal settlements,” Mayor Aki-Sawyerr told the virtual meeting.
“Our city’s experiences from the Ebola outbreak have informed our local plans but we are also learning from ongoing COVID-19 responses of other cities from around the world as we try to prevent and prepare to respond to the crisis,” she added.
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