UGANDA— A three-day technical review workshop held in Kampala, Uganda, under the auspices of the Public Health Risk Communication Community of Practice for Africa (PH-RCCE-CoPA), has been held in Kampala, Uganda.
The PH-RCCE-CoPA was established in 2020 by Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO).
The joint program’s primary objective is to promote best practices, continuous learning, and knowledge exchange among African countries.
The program also provides strategic leadership and coordination for public health risk communication and community engagement initiatives in the continent as well as institutionalizes PH-RCCE as an essential part of public health interventions in Africa.
The members of the PH-RCCE-CoPA called for countries to prioritize Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) as a key pillar of public health emergency response.
The Health Promotion and Risk Communication experts representing 48 African Union (AU) member states emphasized that early community engagement was critical to ensure community ownership of public health intervention during disease outbreaks.
The workshop participants reiterated on the need for strategies, as well as financial resources for emergency response must be decentralized and extended to cover RCCE activities.
At the opening of the workshop, Mr Peter Kabela, Senior Language Expert at Africa CDC, delivered a welcoming remark on behalf of Dr Benjamin Djoudalbaye, Head of Policy Health Diplomacy and Communication at Africa CDC.
Kabela emphasized the importance of the equitable distribution of information and engagement with communities across Africa during an outbreak.
“Given the diverse culture and languages spoken across Africa, we must explore innovative ways to ensure that communication and engagement strategies are tailored to the specific needs of each community in our respective countries”, Kabela read.
Improving Public health risk Communication and Community engagement in Africa
Africa CDC notes that with more than 200 members across the continent, the PH-RCCE-CoPA has been holding monthly knowledge and experience-sharing webinars.
Moreover, these meetings have been instrumental in bringing RCCE experts together for peer-to-peer knowledge and experience exchange on the COVID-19 pandemic, Monkey Pox Virus, Ebola, and other Public Health emergencies.
During the Kampala gathering, countries presented their unique RCCE experience while responding to multiple outbreaks.
The challenges highlighted by the RCCE experts were low adherence to preventive measures, vaccine hesitancy, inadequate human, and financial capacity to execute RCCE activities, and lack of RCCE legal framework for the sustainability of the RCCE pillar.
Dr. Diana Atwine, Permanent Secretary for Health, Ministry of Health Uganda, said, “In the recent past, most countries during emergencies have been focusing on strengthening Surveillance, Laboratory Systems, Logistics, and Case Management with minimal focus on tackling issues that touch the hearts of the people in communities.”
Dr. Atwine added that the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, which took nearly two years, and other outbreaks that came after, taught Africa a great lesson about the importance of risk communication, particularly engaging and listening to the affected communities.
In addition to creating an avenue for the RCCE focal points and partners in the continent, Africa CDC and its partners have adopted a continental RCCE training module.
The PH-RCCE-CoPA has also organized regional RCCE refresher capacity-building workshops for the RCCE experts across the 5 African Union (AU) regions and trained over 120 RCCE experts in 2022.
As the continent transitions from the emergency state of the COVID-19 response to an integrated response with other disease outbreaks, Africa CDC is taking stock of all the platforms established to support the continental COVID-19 response.
Africa CDC and its member nations seek to leverage these platforms for other diseases’ emergency response activities.
The RCCE Community-of-Practice also held its second election of Steering Committee (SC) members as a major outcome of this technical review and planning meeting.
Accordingly, the four new steering committee members were elected by their colleagues to lead the CoPA for the next two years.
They include Dr. Da Costa Aboagye, Ghana Chair (Western region), Mrs. Sinenhlanhla Jimoh, South Africa Co-Chair (Southern region), Mr. Lucien Emmanuel Ibata, Republic of Congo, (Central region) and Mr. Wycliffe Matini, Kenya, (Eastern region).
A representative from the Northern region will be identified soon.
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