It's one of my biggest aim to always give back to my people. Greetings to everyone on this platform and I hope everyone here is doing great.
As a newbie, This is my first time making a post on stemsocial and I'm hoping to always contribute massively in impacting positively to the ecosystem and to this community and Going forward, I strongly believe I will be posting good contents and stories here on stemsocial that will be of great impact to the community and Hive as a whole.
First of all, I will extend my heartfelt gratitude to MasterCard foundation and to HERPOLafrica for supporting this good initiative of giving back to the community and considering the health care and well-being of the people as this goes a long way to advocate,inform and educate the people on how to stay safe and live a good life and will also inform the good people of the community on Covid19 and other deadly diseases.
Also, this initiative seeks to provide the people with water as water has been a major issue for domestic purposes like cooking, washing,bathing etc. The only sources they rely on are boreholes, dam and the river water and this has always been a major challenge for the people living in these communities. So management took it upon themselves to also provide the people with water to at least curb the problem in a way because some of this deadly diseases are waterborne and because the people normally use this water, they get infected so easily.
Moreover, questionnaires were given out to the recruited community health volunteers to interview some respondents to actually get to know their awareness level and to actually know if the people where actually practicing the protocols.
Community Intervention and Outreach to Janakpeng ,Janapkeng is a small farming community and a suburb of Tamale in the Northern part of Ghana and its in the Nantong district just approximately 10minutes ride from Jana, a neighboring community. The people living in this community are mainly farmers, some traders and most of the ladies are house wives because they are unemployed and predominantly, they are Muslims.
The first phase of the project aimed at creating awareness of the Covid19 virus in some of the communities in the Nantong district and some communities in Tamale and seek to provide interventions of which Janakpeng was not left out . The second phase seeks to make follow ups to and continue to create awareness and interventions and also to remind the community people of how to prevent themselves from diseases and most especially the vaccine of Covid19 of which most of them are enthusiastic and cant wait to be vaccinated.
We the community health volunteers in addition with our coordinator and the community lead visited the chief palace, introduced ourselves and he quickly remembered us due to our previous visits, he welcomed us with Cola nuts and he was very happy to see us again and he was really thankful for our relentless efforts in fighting Covid19. The coordinator with the help of the community lead told the chief what we came back to do and he paved the way for us to do what we were supposed to do.
A total number of 50 respondents views were solicited all of which are residents of Janapkeng. Per the data the was recorded and analyzed this time round, 25.4% of the people are of the ages between 26-35, 8.6% are of the ages ranging from 36-45,37.8% are of ages ranging from 18-25 and 13.5% are of the ages ranging from 18 and below,4.2% of ages ranging from 46-55, 3% of the ages ranging 66 and above and 6% of ages ranging 56-65 respectively of which 45.4% are female and 54.4% are males. 64.9% of the respondents were married, 32.4% are single of which 1% are divorced and lesser number of them are widows. 11.4% are house wives,45.4% are farmers,21.1% are students, 8.6% are artisans and a lesser number of people with different occupations that serves as source of income for them.
AWARENESS AND KNOWLEDGE ON COVID19
From the data we had, 75.8% knows the most common symptoms of Covid19 and 21.1% do not know the most common symptoms of Covid19. Furthermore, 76.2% of the respondents knew that asymptomatic person can transit the disease and 23.8% don’t really that is possible. Also, 93% of them knew Covid19 can be transmitted or spread via droplets of infected individuals and 7% of them did not know. 45% of the respondents knew that infected people can transmit the virus but not only when they have fever and 54.1% of the respondents did not know,93.5% knew that, to prevent Covid19, individuals should avoid going to crowded places and 6.5% did not know,57.8% knows the latest information on Covid19 and 42.2% do not know.
ATTITUDE OF THE COMMUNITY PEOPLE ON COVID19
The analysis shows that,58.9% of the respondents believe that there is no Covid19 existing in Ghana and amazedly 41.1% of them believe there virus exist in Ghana. Moreover, 67% of the respondents believe Covid19 cannot affect young people and 33% believe the virus can affect young people. The statistics shows that 50.3% of the respondents believe that exposing oneself to higher sun heat can prevent Covid19 and 49.7 do not actually believe that. Also, 91.4% agreed that they will self-isolate when they start showing symptoms of Covid19 and this shows that the people really care about their health and the lives of their family and friends but then 8.6% of the respondents did not agree to self-isolate when they start showing symptoms. Furthermore,91.9% of the people agreed to go the quarantine center if they develop signs and symptoms of Covid19 and 8.1% did not agree to that.56.2% of the respondents believe eating a lot of garlic prevents Covid19 infection and 43.8% do not believe that. The overall assessment of the attitude of the people of Janakpeng towards Covid19 has improved since majority of them are now curious about the virus and are adhering to the various safety precautions measures of the virus and its optimistic that our subsequent visits will be needful.
Per the data that was collected,70.8% of the respondents do stand 2 meters apart when they speak in front of others and 29.2% of them don’t adhere to this protocol. In the aspect of washing hands frequently to prevent them from Covid19, 95.1% of them adhere to that and the 4.9% don’t practice. 93.5% of them use tissue when sneezing or coughing and 6.5% of them do not cover their nose when sneezing or coughing. Furthermore, 90.8% of the respondents wear when they are leaving home and 9.2% don’t do that. 95.7% do use soap and sanitizers when washing hands and 4.3% don’t do such. 66.5% of them often go to crowded places and 33.5% don’t usually go to crowded places. With regards to the vaccination,80.5% are not vaccinated and 19.5% have been vaccinated but 80.5% are anticipating to be vaccinated if given the chance and 18.4% are not willing to be vaccinated because they believe the vaccine will be of harm to their health.
Looking at this statistics, it shows that majority of the people now have knowledge about Covid19 and it also shows that the attitude as to how to prevent themselves has changed and now majority of them are adhering and practicing the protocols we sensitized them about and it’s a headway to conquering the disease collectively with the people because its up to us and our conversations with these people shows that the community anticipates our subsequent visits as we will be visiting some number of communities in the district and it will always be a privilege post these contents here as we give back to these communities.
Thanks for reading.