How Ghanaians are Managing Covid 19

When the Corona Virus started spreading in China, some Ghanaians thought it a joke, in a few months, thousands of people were dying and thousands more were getting infected each day. As of May 2020, more than 800 people were dying a day in Italy. After our general elections in December, our infection rate started increasing.

More than 500 people have already lost their lives in the country. More people are getting infected with the new variants of the virus. People have lost their sense of smell and taste, others have ear infections from the virus, some people are in the intensive care unit, on oxygen machines.

What are you doing to protect yourself? For those who were infected mildly, what did they do to manage the infection? Some of these methods have not been scientifically approved, but infected people tried them, and they fell better even though remnants of the virus could still be in their system.

Some individuals take antibiotics together with soluble vitamin C when they learn they have been infected. How do they know? After a strong fever that would last a few days, one catches a cold and will start coughing, depending on how strong your immune system is, you can overcome the cold and cough a few weeks later.

The aftermath is the loss of smell and taste, which will also last for a month or two, even a year in someone’s cases. How do you manage this? Some individuals purchase antibiotics such as azithromycin from the Pharmacy to help with the infection and also dissolve soluble vitamin C in water to boost the immune system. 

Taking in those antibiotics is not proven to eliminate the virus but it has helped some individuals feel better, at least for now. We have been advised though, not to abuse these medicines. The vaccines have not yet been distributed to Ghana, so if you get infected, go to the hospital, and maybe they can prescribe some of these antibiotics for you.

It always starts with a fever. How do you help bring down your temperature? Well, Ghanaians use a “makeshift” sauna with a neem tree. This is done by boiling the leaves of the neem tree, sitting in front of it with three to four big clothes covering you at the top, whiles you inhale the hot air from the boiled solution. The radiated heat is supposed to help normalize your body temperature.

Leaves from the neem tree can also be used to treat urinary tract infections, constipation, cough, gastric ulcers, periodontal diseases, and many more. 

Burnt oranges are known to help bring back the sense of taste, and smell in some cases. This is done by burning fresh oranges directly on the fire and eating the roughages. This has also not been scientifically proven to help bring back your taste but people have done it, and it seems to work for them, it wouldn’t hurt to try. You will never know.

Eating fruits and drinking lots of water also helps to hydrate the body. Until the covid 19 vaccines get here, let us do all we can to protect ourselves. Wash your hands, use sanitizer and stay at home if you do not have any important business outside your house.

The methods above are NOT scientifically proven to CURE covid 19, these are just methods that can help you manage the infection. Stay safe.