Their skills and knowledge in community sensitisation cannot be underestimated, since they have large followership. To cap it off, their messages are easily digested and understood at the community level.
In any disease outbreak, people must adhere to best practices and guidelines put forward by the health experts. This helps the people to put in place necessary measures needed to combat the emerging virus.
Cognizance of their active role in community, the Ministry of Health and WHO has ended a nationwide orientation of traditional communicators meant to arm them with the requisite skills on how to contain the deadly corona virus.
The last orientation of about 30 participants, which forms the last leg of a nationwide initiative, earlier saw nationwide orientation of over 200 traditional communicators.
What is even more worrying is the emergence of new covid-19 variants, such as those indentified in South Africa, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
However, in order to register gains in totally eradicating this global pandemic, there is need for attitudinal change and for people to always adhere to World Health Organisation and Ministry of Health’s precautionary guidelines of wearing of face masks, testing, and physical distancing.
Many people are of the view that corona virus is dead, but the stark reality is, this global cancer is still with us.
Suffice it to state that counting the costs of COVID-19 far transcends head-count of fatalities. As a matter of fact, fatalities, if it will be rightly counted, should include, not only the numerical value of human lives lost, but also, losses in economic, industrial, vocational, educational aspects, among others.
We therefore commend the Ministry of health and its partners for the foresight and dedication in involving traditional communicators in the fight against corona virus.
Let’s not forget that to combat covid-19, we must join forces in that regard.
This pandemic is far from over. As new variant cases emerged across the world, we must be ready to act fast to save lives. But it’s also now clear that we can also take decisive action today by changing our attitude.
"We have a single mission: to protect and hand on the planet to the next generation."
Francois Hollande