Mali’s largest jail is a squalid and overcrowded colonial-era throwback that, in theory, would be an open invitation to COVID-19, except that the staff at Bamako Central Prison say that so far they have kept the virus at bay, thanks to hygiene and self-help.
Outside the penitentiary’s walls, the Malian capital has registered most of the country’s 2,577 infections and 125 deaths, while inside, the number of recorded cases is exactly zero.
“From the start of the pandemic, we did everything we could to prevent it from getting in,” said prison warden Adama Guindo, who wore a mask.
Photo: AFP
Hand cleanliness, temperature checks for visitors and an innovative scheme for inmates to make masks have been crucial.
There is every reason to be vigilant, as the prison is an ideal breeding ground for the coronavirus.
Built by French colonial authorities in 1951, the prison was designed for 400 inmates, but holds 2,100. Hundreds of people are crammed on top of each other in filthy cells.
Photo: AFP
Common criminals and captured militants from Mali’s eight-year conflict live cheek by jowl: cooking together, running tattoo parlors and trading cigarettes.
In Mali’s Bamako Central Prison, officers transferred about 600 inmates to another jail in the city’s suburbs to reduce overcrowding. Some prisoners also received a presidential pardon.
However, even with those measures, the prison remains hugely overcrowded, mostly because of the vast number of people held in pretrial detention.
Only 160 inmates there have been convicted, which Guindo admitted is a “catastrophe.”
His staff have limited prison visits in a bid to reduce the chances of infection. Anyone entering must also take a temperature test and wash their hands.
However, early action by the authorities to impose restrictions on contact and mobility has been a key part of reducing the risk, experts have said.
One of the first steps was an offer of help by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
It donated hand-washing kits, which are dotted around the prison, and is also encouraging prisoners to manufacture their own face masks.
The ICRC buys 500 masks per week from inmates who work as tailors and then redistributes them.
Chiaka, a prisoner and apprentice seamster who is about 20 years old, said that usually the prison tailors made everyday clothing.
“Now masks have become a priority,” he said.
For all that, only prison officers appear to wear masks. Many in Mali choose not to, partly because of stigma, although, among prisoners, the main reason seems to be an indifference to the coronavirus.
The ICRC confirmed that there have been no documented cases at the prison and Mahamadou Diarra, one of the jail’s two doctors, said that there had “only been suspected cases” of coronavirus, all of which had tested negative.
Guindo is cautiously beginning to hope that the pandemic will pass his prison by.
“If the monitoring continues to be done proactively, we have every chance of being spared,” he said. “We’re in the middle of the river, but we can’t declare victory until we’ve reached the other side.”
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might