Hileni Mwandingi

GOBABIS – In an effort to curb the further spread of Covid-19 in the region, healthcare workers at Gobabis, including doctors and nurses, took to the community to educate and share information on the deadly virus. 
Led by chief medical officer Dr Leonard Kabongo, the healthcare workers were joined by the regional police, youth volunteers and other stakeholders while raising awareness by visiting most of the hotspots around the town on Friday.

Armed with megaphones in the first-ever of its kind, the group touched all corners of the town, starting their campaign from the informal settlements, before heading to fueling stations, taxi ranks and supermarkets then close off at the town’s biggest shopping mall.
Kabongo said the initiative was prompted by the increase in numbers of covid-19 positive cases in the region. He said they noticed that part of that increase was due to the community being relaxed and not taking regulations seriously.  

“This exercise was all about awareness on Covid-19; we have seen that the measures are not respected in the community; people are becoming more relaxed – and yet, we in the field we see cases rising as a result of people being relaxed. And we decided, as health care workers, doctors and nurses who are actually in the frontline, who are seeing cases, to go out there and tell the people the real story about Covid-19 that it is real, it is happening and they must be serious about the regulations and measures that have been put in place,” he said.

Kabongo also added that depending on the outcome of this campaign, there might be similar exercises. 
He said they will keep monitoring the response from the community to determine if a similar follow-up exercise will be needed. 
“The response again is going to be seen after a few weeks; we will monitor the behaviour but we are also going to monitor the data that we are getting from the contacts – from the people who are testing positive; we will see if this has really made an impact. According to what we are will see, if the people did not really change their behaviour, we are going to double our effort again.”