WHEN I sat watching the news the other week, I had to lean a little forward from my sofa and perk up my ears. I poked fingers into my ears and turned on the volume to make sure I was hearing right.
The news was about violence and people being displaced. News about violence is always unsettling. There is just something about violence that wants to make you turn your shoulders and check if you are safe yourself.
Intuitively you do a snap check of the security gadgets around your home and around yourself personally. It’s the sort of thing you should not really be spending your time on, in a peaceful Christian nation.
It produces that lingering uneasy feeling inside. It makes you want to take an extra good look at your neighbours and close friends, and wonder.
There is that unstated but lingering fear that maybe the talk of a Christian nation is only on paper. You begin to wonder if the next international headlines about displaced people will come from your neighbourhood.
When a church mate of mine made the point that one of the places where violence can easily foment is the church, I got really nervous.
I keep buying the paper eagerly each morning looking out for a picture of President-elect Edgar Lungu shaking hands with United Pary for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema, boy that would do wonders!
There is something about violence that brings disquiet to the mind. It’s both its unpredictability, its uncontrollable nature as well as its non-amenability to reason. Violence is what is used when people fail to convince each other through the force of reason.
For a long time the World health Organisation (WHO) did not consider violence a major risk to health. However, it has increasingly become recognised as a major risk to health in many parts of the world. In my experience, violence does far more harm to the perpetrators than to the victims.
For the victims they have physical scars that eventually heal, but for the perpetrators they have emotional scars that grow ever deeper within.
The soil in which violence thrives is the manure of conflict.
1.How does violence affect health?
Even though the question appears to have a pretty obvious answer, the explanation is less easily given. The first port of call would be the medical definition of violence. Violence encompasses any intentional physical injury which results in physical, emotional and mental harm to others.
The common groups or categories of violence are domestic violence (in the home), gender violence (against women), child abuse (against children) and community violence (against general society).
Violence can take several forms including sexual, physical, psychological and deprivation. This means that instruments by which injury is inflicted on others may vary with differing outcomes. Among the more commonly used are physical and sexual violence.
These methods result in physical injury to the body ranging from minor external injuries to more serious internal injuries, which may result in death. Different weapons may be used to inflict injury, including home-made weapons, tools, kitchen utensils and professional weapons (guns, military armory, etc).
Sexual violence usually perpetrated by men against women may cause physical, medical and emotional injury at the same instance.
The WHO has shown that over one million people die of violence-related causes annually worldwide. Violence has been shown to be one of the leading causes of death in people aged between 15 and 44. It is highest in the conflict ridden areas of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Violence is attracted to vulnerability because the poor, the puny and the paltry are soft targets; they have no ability to fight back.
In areas of conflict the most affected following this category are children, women and the elderly. The perpetrators are often young men. Violence costs billions of dollars, and it deliberately targets and tends to destroy health service infrastructure at the same time. The cycle of violence is easy to initiate but it is very difficult to reverse.
2. What health problems can be caused by violence?
Societal violence is like a bush fire. It destroys whatever it finds in its path. It also uses whatever means it has at its disposal at the time. Much of the health problems that it causes are physical injuries, permanent disability, rape (with its associated maladies), mental and emotional disabilities.
In the presence of violence other diseases are compounded or get worse, because of displacement and destruction of health services.
So all other health indicators get worse. These include an increase in women dying in child birth (maternal mortality), increase in the number of infants dying (infant mortality), increase in poor nutrition of children (malnutrition), increase in the level of infectious disease (tuberculosis, malaria, STIs and HIV) and increase in mental illnesses.
The few remaining functional hospitals are quickly overwhelmed by mass population injuries such as broken bones (fractures), broken skulls (head injuries), internal injuries (ruptured viscus) and so on.
In this type of environment there is often a breakdown in the normal processes of law and order. Therefore, medicines and medical supplies are short.
Medical personal are also victims, so the people to provide health services are few. The abuse of alcohol and other illicit drugs becomes rampant as well. This is both by the perpetrators to fuel their activities and the victims to overcome their mental and emotional anguish.
3. What can I do to prevent violence?
The greatest thing that fuels violence is indifference. The feeling that I am personally safe, and it cannot happen here. This complacency is the greatest thing that like dry wound crackles the flames of suppressed violence. When good people do nothing then conflict and violence thrive.
Being aware of the devastating effects of violence prompts us to take action. Violence builds from interpersonal conflict. When people feel marginalised from the group they become disgruntled and are likely to provide the greatest risk of promoting violence.
Someone who feels that society does not care about them, may feel that they have nothing to lose by supporting violence.
Remember violence is perpetrated by people like you and me, it takes people like you and me to prevent it. Your personal role and mine cannot, therefore, be insignificant. Make a habit of quenching conflict and preventing violence in your sphere of influence. Promote the peaceful resolution of problems among your children, family and in your community. Violence has never solved conflict.
In fact violence is an admission of failure to resolve conflict by the power of the community and reason. Violence always begets violence, if you make the practice of resolving conflict by physical force, you will be teaching your children the same. If you promote violence in your home, you will be promoting violence in your community and in the nation.
Remember peace costs less than violence. Four things are useful in dealing with violence, these are;
1.Awareness
2.Education
3.Media messages
4.The church
Your role is to let your voice be heard where you are. Be bold enough to oppose violence wherever you see it. If you don’t confront violence with peace, then violence will confront you and take away your peace.