A field exercise was held at Bongoru, the entry point of the border between Cameroon and Chad, with technical and financial support from WHO. The simulation exercise allowed border control staff at the services in charge of hygiene, detection and prevention to practice the COVID-19 emergency response plans and to find ways to improve preparedness. The simulation ended at the Bongoru Provincial Hospital where 50 hospital staff members had the opportunity to exercise emergency response skills. Simulation exercises such as this have become an integrated, systematic component of WHO’s support to the country in its fight to address the pandemic.
Chad’s door-to-door campaign, launched in May 2020, is another integral part of its response to COVID-19. Local village chiefs, neighbourhood leaders and health workers volunteer to go door-to-door spreading messages of hygiene safety and answering questions. Messages are better received when coming from someone in the same community who speaks the same language and understands cultural expectations.
WHO supports the health authorities in their work to train nearly 700 community health educators in the country’s seven provinces. A call centre, messages disseminated through 17 radio stations in several towns and thousands of posters complement the house-to-house health education drive launched in May 2020. The community approach is also an effective way of combatting rumours and disinformation, says Djazouli Ibn Adam, who heads the health promotion division at the Ministry of Health. The involvement of members of the communities “inspires confidence among families and makes it easy to relay messages and gather information from households,” says Mr Adam.
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