Prevention is better than cure – COVID 19 Training and awareness campaign

Prevention is better than cure – COVID 19 Training and awareness campaign

Last week, we completed our ration kit distribution activities to the needy families in and around Kundapur and also at Ballenahalli (Mysore). In total, we distributed 214 ration kits for 898 beneficiaries with the cooperation of local government officials and Panchayat members.

We now turn our focus to promoting awareness on hygiene and COVID-19 infection control measures in local communities. Over the next 4 days, we will be conducting 5 sessions on the awareness and preventive care of COVID 19, for 135 families in the lower-income group.

The objective of these sessions is to educate and spread awareness on COVID-19 thereby enabling local communities to be better prepared for, and reduce vulnerabilities to the pandemic. We propose to limit the spread through information dissemination, on maintaining good hygiene practices, demonstrating proper hand-washing procedures, awareness on nutrition, and building immunity.

On 2nd June, we conducted our first COVID 19 prevention and awareness training for 30 families from the Fisherman Community at Kharvikeri Melkeri in Kundapur.  They were selected due to the proximity of houses within the community, and the possibility of the virus spreading rapidly in crowded places is significantly higher.

The community’s Jettikeshwara temple provided us space in front of the temple, where the presentations took place at 5 pm. Representatives from more than 30 families attended in spite of the showers of rain which conveniently stopped just before the programme, and resumed well after our distribution activities.

We mobilised local volunteers Srikanth Kharvi, Vignesh Kharvi, Prasanth Kharvi, Sunil Kharvi and Pradeep Kharvi, who helped to arrange the chairs, sanitise the participants and distribute the Safety and Hygiene kits.

All the participants were taken through some safety measures, which were carried out by our staff. Shalini ensured each person’s hands were thoroughly sanitised and their temperatures were taken by Dinesh and Nagaraj, with a thermal gun, before the presentations were made by Venkatesh.

We took them through 3 presentations covering the following topics:

  • Introduction to COVID 19 – Symptoms, Prevention Measures, Complications
  • Prevention and Safe Practices in the Community  – Hand Hygiene, Respiratory Hygiene, Social Distancing, and High-Risk Groups
  • How to Manage Stigma and Discrimination – What is stigma, Why Covid-19 carries a stigma, How do we recognise stigmatising behaviour and What we can do about it

A demonstration of the proper hand-washing technique was made by Nagaraj. The participants were receptive to the knowledge transfer and asked a lot of relevant questions.

Finally, we distributed Safety and Hygiene kits to all present, each containing a sanitiser, 5 Dettol soaps, 8 handkerchiefs, and a nail cutter.

Appropriate Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials were developed using guidelines from the website of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (https://www.mohfw.gov.in/).

Posters approved by the Government of India were also distributed to the participants with a request to put them up in their homes, public places, and anywhere else that would help to promote awareness. The posters highlighted how to wash hands the right way, why masking is essential, and also provided tips on personal hygiene for prevention and awareness of the virus.

The session ended with a request to the participants to share their knowledge with other families in the community.

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