TSF organises plague awareness sessions
With 127 confirmed deaths and over 1,800 registered cases since August, the plague is sweeping across certain regions of Madagascar. Whilst progress has been made in response to the outbreak, the sustainability of ongoing operations remains critical, and Télécoms Sans Frontières is participating in raising local awareness on this fatal epidemic.
Via its IT Cup community development centre in Miarinarivo, TSF has been teaming up with the town's hospital to provide awareness sessions on the epidemic. Using the ICT tools available in the Centre, participants benefit from presentations given by doctors from the hospital, as well as the medical experts in charge of plague prevention in the Itasy region (where TSF has been present since 2012). Sessions include both theoretical and interactive activities, with participants playing an active role in knowledge acquisition, helping them both improve their understanding of the disease (definitions, symptoms, transmission and prevention) and also dispel the various misconceptions surrounding the epidemic. Workshops end with participants taking part in a quiz to test their understanding of the subject matters covered.
TSF's Centre manager in Miarinarivo confirms that:
/"the workshops not only allow people to obtain answers to questions that worry them surrounding the plague, but also they are reassured by the fact that many of the word-of-mouth horror stories they hear are just rumours, and that the transmission of plague can be decelerated through awareness."/
Within the framework of its activities aimed at bridging the digital divide, awareness is one of TSF's key objectives in Miarinarivo. Since the start of the year, we have teamed up with specialists from the local hospital to organise sessions on a number of local issues including schistosomiasis (snail fever), food poisoning, addiction, sexually transmitted infections and healthy eating.
These sessions come as part of TSF's commitment to broadening the scope of its community ICT Centre in Miarinarivo, branching out to different sectors where the use of ICT can have a real impact in prevention and resilience, ensuring that communities themselves are at the heart of leveraging ICT for sustainable development.