The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s livelihood, says Empower Pacific chief executive officer Patrick Morgam.
The NGO has had to deal with thousands of concerned Fijians because of this and Mr Morgam said the numbers were expected to increase in the coming weeks as case numbers increased.
“We have mothers who deliver pre-term babies and they are away from home for some time, and they are finding it hard to cope and we have to actually sustain them through their quarantine cycle and even afterwards,” Mr Morgam said.
“The cases we deal with are not just trauma-related but there have also been child-protection issues, gender-based violence issues that arise and of course there are depressions.
“Postpartum depression for mothers is also on the rise and these are cases our counsellors have had to deal with.” Mr Morgam said counsellors and social workers would always work together to ensure clients’ needs were met upon their requests.
“It’s challenging work because when we deal with food rations we have to call one organisation and they actually are exhausted because they have been providing it for a while and the food ration is not there.
“So we have to move from one stakeholder to another and one case might just take one day to sort out and we have food donors and we are actually hoping to get more donors on board because psychosocial has got two components via counselling, and also social where we provide them with the muchneeded resources.”
Mr Morgam shared that apart from dealing with calls related to the effects of COVID-19, they also had ongoing support for patients diagnosed with mental health illnesses. He said the pandemic has worsened the situation of some of these patients.
“The mild anxieties have become severe anxiety and mild depression with socioeconomic issues has become major because people have been laid off work and the benefits and the cost of living is high and families are struggling.”
