NCCE upscales anti COVID-19 campaign

The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has scaled up its Anti-COVID-19 Public Education Campaign to ensure the nation stands up in unity and solidarity against the pandemic.

Mr Eric Adu, the Acting NCCE Ahafo Regional Director, said at the weekend that the Commission had identified misinformation, fake news and fake videos circulating on social media as a major threat to the fight against the disease.

Hence the NCCE, which had been on the ground, had upped its public education efforts to dispel some of the myths surrounding the protection and prevention of the COVID-19.

Mr Adu, in a telephone interview with the Ghana News Agency, said information such as walking through the scorching sun, drinking of local gin, the use of locally prepared concoctions to fortify oneself against the COVID-19, were all false and not scientifically proven.

He said the Commission had launched the “NCCE Anti-COVID-19 Public Education Campaign” to educate Ghanaians that the coronavirus was not a myth but a reality with no known vaccine at the moment.

It focuses on symptoms, mode of transmission and the need to observe safety protocols outlined by the World Health Organisation and Ghana Health Service to prevent infection.

The NCCE is undertaking the campaign in collaboration with the Church of Pentecost, which has provided mobile cinema van for the campaign.

Mr Adu noted that as a grassroots public educator, the NCCE had adopted community observation and monitoring as advocacy mechanisms to understand the challenges inhibiting adherence to the safety and health protocols.

“We have therefore adopted the community language advocacy to reach out to the people in the language they understand best,” he said, adding: “COVID-19 has come with its own terminologies, which must be translated accurately into our local language if not we end up misinforming the public”.

“We observe what was actually happening in the communities and prompt the people to do the right things, we are also engaging other stakeholders for holistic education.”

He commended the Church of Pentecost for providing the van and the Asunafo North Cooperative Cocoa Farmers Union in Goaso for the financial support.

Mr Adu also commended traditional leaders, the media, security, and other stakeholders including the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies within the Region for their support.

“We must continue to drum home the need to wash hands under running water with soap for at least 20 seconds regularly to kill any virus in one’s palms; apply alcohol-based hand sanitizers thoroughly on one’s hands in the absence of water and soap,” he said.

He said practicing respiratory hygiene such as sneezing or coughing into a tissue paper and disposing of it into closed bins or coughing into closed elbows were measures to prevent the secretion of the person from getting into contact with others to endanger their lives.

Mr Adu appealed to parents to strictly monitor their children and ensure they stayed at home to prevent them from getting infected.

“Encourage the children to stay glued to the television set and take advantage of the e-learning programmes on the various channels”.