Health
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Crisis Communication experts has developed new strategies to inform and mobilise communities in the Economic Community of West African States on how to respond the Ebola Virus Disease
REGIONAL experts in crisis communication and community mobilisation have validated harmonised messages to be rolled out with strategic tools to engender massive community participation towards strengthening national and regional responses to the Ebola Virus Disease, EVD. The disease has claimed more than 4,000 lives from the more than 8,000 cases reported in the ECOWAS region.
The behaviour change messages developed by an experts who met in Accra, recently and designed to sensitise and elicit appropriate actions from targeted audiences in the Ebola affected and non-affected countries in West Africa were reviewed and validated by an enlarged experts meeting also in the Ghanaian capital which held from October 9 to 11.
In addition, the meeting adopted the appropriate channels for the transmission of the messages, the strategies and approaches for effective engagement of various segments of communities in Ebola affected and non-affected countries.
The messages are crafted in simple, direct and action-oriented language to elicit maximum impact and responses from the target audiences for the effective prevention, containment, management and control of the deadly Ebola disease and at the same time addressing panic and stigmatisation. The target audiences for the messages include the general public, opinion, traditional and religious leaders, infected persons, their families, survivors, health workers, and border communities. Others are educational institutions, armed and security forces, the private sector, hunters and bush meat sellers, traditional healers and birth attendants, nursing mothers, mortuary attendants and the media.
The meeting also validated the action plan developed by the first experts’ meeting including workshops for capacity building for the media and community mobilization actors, focused on coordinated emergency communication response strategy using multi-media messaging tools.
The capacity building/training will immediately be followed by the aggressive engagement of the media and different segments of the population and the roll out of the messages for effective community mobilization and participation.
The crisis communication and community mobilisation experts meeting organized by the ECOWAS Commission in collaboration with the West African Health Organisation, WAHO, the specialised agency of ECOWAS is a follow-up to the ECOWAS coordinating ministerial group meeting for the implementation of the regional operational plan on the fight against Ebola. The participants included health officials from the Ebola affected and non-affected countries, representatives of WHO, UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, IFRC, the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor and the John Hopkins University Centre for Communications.
Others were the Media Foundation for West Africa, MFWA, the West African Network for Peace building, WANEP, West Africa Democracy Radio, West African Civil Society Forum, officials of the ECOWAS Commission and WAHO.
— Oct. 27, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
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Tags: Ebola Virus Disease Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS John Hopkins University Centre for Communications Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies UNICEF West African Health Organisation WHO
