No less than 803,000 inhabitants in 1,200 communities in Lagos State were captured in a month-long campaign to flatten the curve of COVID-19 pandemic in the state embarked upon by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) with support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The Director of NOA in Lagos State, Mr Waheed Ishola, who spoke on the motorised campaign said the programme was designed to enlighten the general public in Lagos on how to prevent themselves from contracting the coronavirus.
Mr Ishola said the campaign was taken to the 20 Local Government Areas of Lagos State and that 1,200 communities were reached over the period of the sensitisation campaign.
He said: “803,000 Lagos citizens were captured in the campaign in the 20 Local Government Areas of the state. In all the campaign was carried out in 1,200 communities. The programme was to enlighten the general public in Lagos on how to prevent themselves from contracting the coronavirus.”
In addition to the physical sensitisation, Ishola added that 200,000 informational and educational (IEC) materials were distributed in the exercise.
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The Lagos NOA Director said: “We had five different teams each with a motorised vehicle, public address system and other equipment like that. We distributed each of the five teams to the five local governments in Lagos State. Each of the team was assigned simultaneously to five local governments. We did five local governments in each week for four weeks.”
Speaking on the aim of the sensitization programme, he said: “the campaign was to flatten the curve, and for all to take responsibility by obeying the non-pharmaceutical interventions in the prevention of COVID-19.”
Another, according to him, was to let the people know that “COVID-19 is real, COVID-19 is with us and that the only way we can protect ourselves is by taking responsibility.”
The NOA chief lauded the UNICEF for sponsoring the programme and praised the impact of the international agency for always making useful interventions in Nigeria.
According to Ishola, “the campaign was sponsored by UNICEF. In the team, we had the National Orientation Agency (NOA) taking the lead and officials of the Lagos State Ministry of Health participating.”
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