21 APRIL 2020

ATT: KWAZULU-NATAL PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT PREMIER
         MR. SIHLE ZIKALALA

CC : MEC FOR HEALTH
MS NOMAGUGU SIMELANE-ZULU

Dear Honourable Comrade Sihle Zikalala

RE: SELF ISOLATION

SAMNET notes with pleasure your clarification of initial media reports suggesting that your office and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health had instructed that all self-isolation should be done in State facilities and that home or private institutional self isolation would not be permitted in our province. We believe and are relieved at your clarification, given the fact that the State facilities are already overburdened financially, logistically and under staffed with human resources.

Had the policy of isolation in state facilities, as initially reported, been implemented, it would have overburdened already stretched state facilities, state resources and funding to care for asymptomatic or well patients in isolation, whereas this can adequately be done at home or another controlled setting. People would also have been discouraged by such a policy, to test and report. Our extensive information campaigns in association with organizations like the Islamic Medical Association of South Africa (IMASA), have been directed towards health education and compliance with national disaster management act regulations and provisions of the lockdown.

Our community has for the overwhelming majority, responded very positively and proactively to
help “flatten the curve“. We continue to urge our communities and those who have tested Covid 19 positive, to strictly follow self quarantine regulations and to abide by our laws and general medical advice. Muslims are going to start the holy month of Ramadhan on Friday, the 24th April 2020, which entails many additional requirements over and above the normal requirements of prayer as well as enhanced spirituality and praying time, and the ability to self-isolate will certainly allow fasting Muslims, not withstanding the inability to go to mosque to pray, the ability to carry out the requirements of the month of Ramadhan within their homes with adequate support structures while still self-isolating and strictly abiding by quarantine regulations.

We will continue to promote our information campaigns and look forward to working with you to ensure that we all beat the disease together. We should not be burdening state facilities, nor punishing the entire public, because a few people have not abided by quarantine regulations. Our community will continue, even during the fasting, to be at the forefront of delivering food and PPE to vulnerable communities, as we have been since the pandemic started. We attach a report detailing the spend of our community in food provisions for the deserving since the start of the lockdown.

Kind Regards,
Dr Faisal Suliman
Chairman of SAMNET