Garissa clerics religious leaders, health team join hands to create covid awareness following upsurge
Religious leaders from Garissa under the auspices of inter- religion council of Kenya and the department of health in Garissa have embarked on a covid 19 and vaccination campaign in he area.
The two months long vaccination drive will see religious leaders and health officials criss cross the county to create awareness in a bid to boost the uptake.
During this period, several strategies including continuous sensitization and vaccination in places of worship, joint Baraza in various convergent points within the villages, facility –based sensitization and vaccination, vaccination drive as well as sustained radio messaging.
Community Health Volunteers will also be roped in in the campaign. radio talk shows will also be used to pass the message.
Speaking to the press at a Garissa hotel after a two days workshop, Mohamed Salat, the acting chief officer health said that the awareness campaign was important in order to boost the uptake that was still low.
“Our main target is to boost vaccine uptake because as may be aware as a county we have only covered 14 percent of the total population since the exercise started in March 2020,”he said.
This he said makes Garissa to be among the counties with a very low percentage.
He added: “We are very much optimistic that with this new strategy we will be able to increase uptake in the next two months because we know Covid-19 is real and is still with us. We have lost hundreds of people including loves ones, friends and relatives through this monster,” he said.
Salat who admitted that health facilities were still admitting covid 19 patients regretting that a big percentage still believe that Covid-19 doesn’t exist.
Sheikh Hassan Abdi said that as religious leaders they will work closely with health officials to mount serious sensitization campaigns in Mosques and churches to pass the message.
Sheikh Abdi further diffused the notion that has been spread by some quarters that the jab was not safe saying that health officials worldwide had given it a clean bill of health
“As religious leaders we know that we hold a lot of influence in the society and our word is always taken with a lot of seriousness. we will use our different platforms to pass the message.at the end of the day we want to see the coverage increased,”he said.
On his part John Mwaura said the rate at which covid was spreading was alarming.
Mwaura who admitted that the just concluded political season had contributed to the spike regretted that people were disregarding the MoH guidelines, which include wearing of masks and social distancing.