Category: News

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Schools May Become Hotspots For Measles – Health Expert

Health experts have expressed that schools may be superspreaders of measles, with the disease spreading rapidly countrywide since it was detected in Mutasa District on 10 April this year.

As of 6 September 2022, the Ministry of Health and Childcare had recorded 6 551 cumulative cases, including 4 633 recoveries and 704 deaths across the country.

Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) president Enock Dongo told NewsDay that there is a high chance of measles spreading like a wildfire in schools. He said:

There is no guarantee for safety, especially in rural areas and other children where they are crowded.

What it means is that the chances of them spreading to each other are very high, especially considering how virulent it is.

So we have no guarantee that this is not going to spread. People should be vaccinated to avoid the chances of hospitalisation and death.

Community Working Group on Health executive director Itai Rusike said:

We want to continue encouraging parents and guardians to have all children vaccinated against measles in order to avoid schools becoming the epicentre or hotspot for measles.

Westview Clinics boss, Dr Johannes Marisa, said the government should educate people on the importance of being vaccinated against the disease. He said:

We are worried that schools have opened while the situation is like this where measles is spreading like veld fire.

So at this juncture, we should fight vaccine hesitancy by removing all myths around measles.

Disinformation and misinformation surrounding issues of measles are contributing to the law uptake of the vaccines.

Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) noted that measles had been progressing quickly and the case fatality was relatively higher when compared to other recent outbreaks.

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Government must intensify measles awareness and vaccination campaigns

Government must intensify measles awareness and vaccination campaigns

 Credit :Healthtimes

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has urged the government to intensify measles vaccination and awareness campaigns to prevent further deaths as the highly contagious disease continues to claim lives  countrywide.

By Staff Reporter

In a statement, CWGH Executive Director, Mr Itai Rusike said, “…the worrying statistics from the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) indicate that since the measles outbreak in Mutasa district in Manicaland province last month about 700 people, mainly from the religious sects that do not believe in vaccination, have succumbed to the disease.

“More depressing is the fact that the disease, which is preventable by vaccination, has since spread to other parts of the country, killing more people mainly children. With the opening of schools this week, there are fears that the highly contagious disease could rapidly spread across the country, claiming more lives as children from different areas and beliefs mix and mingle in education institutions.”

Government should therefore urgently strengthen its surveillance, control and management procedures to avoid an explosion of the disease in schools.

This also calls on the government to roll-out serious awareness and vaccination campaigns countrywide, including engaging leaders of apostolic sects to ensure they get their children vaccinated to prevent these avoidable deaths.

It is only through reaching out to religious leaders, who command a lot of respect and influence among their congregants that the majority of their followers can agree to get their children vaccinated against measles and other killer diseases.

Informative messages and materials should be printed and distributed where community 
members who are at risk are likely to have access to them.

It is important to note that partnership among the public health sector, civil society and media is critical for successful implementation of public health activities. For that reason, we urge the government to roll-out serious awareness campaigns against measles on television, radio, newspapers, social media platforms and carrying out road shows in the affected areas to ensure that the message reaches out to all citizens to prevent further deaths. One death is too many.

Parents and guardians must also play a pivotal role in the fight against measles. It is inexcusable that, in this time and age, children continue to die from measles and other diseases that are preventable or that should have been eradicated decades ago.

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Measles outbreak looms in schools

THE reopening of schools amid a major measles outbreak countrywide might expose learners who are not vaccinated as Zimbabwe battles to control the disease, health experts have warned.

Statistics from the Health and Child Care ministry show that 153 new cases were recorded on Tuesday while fatalities climbed to 698 from 685.

Cumulative and active cases are now at 6 444 and 4 580, respectively.

Zimbabwe Nurses Association president Enock Dongo expressed fear that schools might be super-spreaders of the medieval disease if pupils are not vaccinated.

“There is no guarantee for safety especially in rural areas and other children where they are crowded. What it means is that the chances of them spreading to each other are very high, especially considering how virulent it is,” Dongo said.

“So we have no guarantee that this is not going to spread. People should be vaccinated to avoid chances of hospitalization and death.”

Community Working Group on Health executive director Itai Rusike said government should strengthen community surveillance and awareness.

“We want to continue encouraging parents and guardians to have all children vaccinated against measles in order to avoid schools becoming the epicenter or hotspot for measles,” Rusike said.

 

Another health expert, Johannes Marisa said the government should educate people so that they can make informed decisions because most people are skeptical about vaccines.

“We are worried that schools have opened while the situation is like this where measles is spreading like veldfire. So at this juncture we should fight vaccine hesitancy by removing all myths around measles.  Disinformation and misinformation surrounding issues of measles is contributing to the law uptake of the vaccines,” Marisa said.

Zimbabwe Senior Hospital Doctors Association president Shingai Nyaguse-Chiurunge concurred saying gathering of unvaccinated people, especially in the apostolic sects is a cause for concern.

The outbreak started in April in Manicaland and has since spread across the country.

More than 50% of the registered cases had not been vaccinated.

The World Health Organization warned in April about the increase in measles cases in vulnerable countries as a result of a disruption of services due to COVID-19.

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Community health workers: Essential for health, under-valued by planners

Community health workers (CHWs) were key to Zimbabwe`s successful expansion of primary health care (PHC) in the early 1980`s. CHWs played a central role in closing the gap between public health services and communities at local levels, bringing health services outreach to communities, and facilitating community roles in the health delivery system. For example, CHWs and Community Based Distributors were instrumental in implementing the successful Zimbabwe Family Planning Programme, as they helped raise awareness on family planning methods such as condoms and combined oral contraceptives (commonly known as “The Pill”), as well as the advantages of child spacing. These efforts are reflected in the expansion of coverage of contraception and reported decrease in fertility rates in the country from 6.5 children per woman in the early 1980`s to 4.3 children per woman in 2001.

CHWs continue up to today to augment the work being done by the mainstream health sector, raising awareness, giving health advice, monitoring growth of children under five years, mobilizing communities during out-reach programmes and for immunization including as trusted sources of information for community literacy on Covid-19.

 


Community health workers reflect on their work

Mrs. Kaseke a CHW in Mwanza Ward (Goromonzi District in Zimbabwe) echoes these sentiments. One of her roles as a CHW is to mobilize food for chronically ill and home based patients in her area. She also runs community based growth monitoring clinics on Saturdays. “I have a scale that was allocated to me by the clinic when I started as a CHW. Women from my area bring their babies at my homestead. I weigh the babies and record their weight on cards, as it is done at the clinic. I then use the weight records to check if the child is growing well; otherwise I refer the child to the clinic for further assessment”.

CHWs see an important role for themselves in bridging the gap between the community and the health services, as explained by another Village Health Worker from Mangwe District in Zimbabwe, Mrs. Portia Moyo:

‘We are the link between the community and the health department. We advise and refer the community to seek medical attention early, care for the home based ridden patients, chronic and TB patients on DOTS’.

CHWs and Community Based Distributors were instrumental in implementing the successful Zimbabwe Family Planning Programme, as they helped raise awareness on family planning methods such as condoms and combined oral contraceptives (commonly known as “The Pill”), as well as the advantages of child spacing.

Low morale or lack of support?

Despite these vital functions, the numbers of CHWs and the role played by CHWs has diminished over the past two decades in Zimbabwe. Whilst communities cite low morale due to lack of incentives as the major setback, the CHWs and other health staff point to lack of incentives and supporting resources and protective equipment as a major barrier to their performance.

In their early years, Community Health Workers benefited from incentives from the National Health Budget such as uniforms, bicycles and allowances, which were meant to enhance their work and motivate them. Bicycles were both a token of appreciation, and a tool to enable these volunteers to take their services to a wider population. The allowances they received helped them to buy basic necessities such as soap, so that they could look presentable whilst they carried out their duties. These incentives are now a thing of the past as there is no provision in our current national health budget to support CHWs hence the overreliance on external donors. There is urgent need to invest in Community Health Workers, increasing domestic health financing and move away from the current heavy reliance on external donors as it is not sustainable and poses a security threat in the event that donors decide to pull out for whatever reason.

Highlighting the plight of Community Health Workers, Mrs. Moyo said:

‘We as Community Health Workers’ are surprised about how we are handled…the problem is, out of all these duties our allowances are still as low as US$15 per month of which it is received after 3 to 6 months… We Community Health Workers are very much exposed to the world of infection, because we do not have protective clothing to put on when attending to home-based patients, of which most of them may have open wounds…We have tried in vain to request these protective clothing from our district hospital but the response is disheartening.’

There is urgent need to invest in Community Health Workers, increasing domestic health financing and move away from the current heavy reliance on external donors as it is not sustainable and poses a security threat in the event that donors decide to pull out for whatever reason.

Whilst communities cite low morale due to lack of incentives as the major setback, the CHWs and other health staff point to lack of incentives and supporting resources and protective equipment as a major barrier to their performance.

We as civil society demand more support for CHWs

Revitalizing CHW roles have been proposed as one measure to deal with the gap in health worker numbers in the face of the brain drain of health workers from rural to urban areas and from developing to developed nations. CHWs do not replace the requirement for adequate trained staff at primary and district levels of health systems, but they are a key cadre in the health system-fully aware of the health needs and aspirations of their communities. This makes them an invaluable asset in advancing community-orientated health delivery, and they should be supported.

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has thus urged government to work with other stakeholders to create a plan to fully fund the CHW programme and support their work and to ensure that adequate resources are allocated in the budget for CHWs are accessible and reach these community level cadres for their work. However, this is not just a matter for government.

As civil society we see that the presence of VHWs in our communities is essential in our quest for equity in health and accessibility of health services, so that we too will be part of this support, including documenting the roles and impacts of CHWs our community to engage government and other stakeholders to value and resource these roles in the spirit of health for all.

The CWGH has thus urged government to work with other stakeholders to create a plan to fully fund the CHW programme and support their work and to ensure that adequate resources are allocated in the budget for CHWs are accessible and reach these community level cadres for their work.

The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) is a network of membership based civic organizations focusing on advocacy, action and networking around health issues in Zimbabwe. www.cwgh.co.zw

Itai Rusike

Itai Rusike is a Public Health Activist with more than 20 years’ experience organizing involvement of communities in health actions in Zimbabwe. He is also an active member of several regional and international organisations including national statutory bodies. Twitter @itairusike Email