AFRICA/SUDAN - "Home-to-Home" campaigns to prevent cholera

Wednesday, 19 July 2017

RD

Khartoum (Agenzia Fides) - Presentations on the streets, online videos, posters, bars of soap: are some of the local initiatives that have been done to help people fight against infection and raise awareness about the rapid spread of cholera in Sudan. Without any support from the Sudanese government in Khartoum, a number of local and civil voluntary initiatives have been active in the fight against cholera. The disease has claimed 940 lives since cholera cases emerged in Blue Nile state in August last year, according to the National Epidemiological Corporation. The campaigners are known to provide information to residents about prevention and local treatment services. Doctors joined some of the initiatives and treat affected people in their homes or transfer them to isolation wards, set-up by hospitals or health centres. The groups create leaflets and videos that explain the diagnosis of the disease, and methods to prepare perfusion solutions at home in order to increase prevention methods.
In several states the Home-to-Home programme helped to identify the extent of the cholera spread, by campaigners visiting residents at home, and identify ways to deal with it. Soon after, medicines, intravenous fluids and salts were provided to people, as well as soap, disinfectants and detergents in hospitals. The field teams also go to mosques, public meetings, markets, on public transport, to provide information on how to avoid cholera and how to deal with people who are infected. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 19/7/2017)


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