The Association For Reproductive And Family Health (ARFH), With Support From United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) Implemented A Project Titled “Risk Communication And Community Engagement Intervention Of The National Covid-19 Multi-Sectoral Pandemic Response Plan

A new community and school-based intervention have shown that risk communication and community engagement can help to improve community member’s access to contraceptive services, limit the spread of Tuberculosis, promote awareness on HIV/AIDS testing and counselling services, correct misconceptions on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) including raising the critical consciousness of people on COVID-19 risk mitigation within households in Oyo State, Nigeria.

Community outreach programs help to create an enabling environment to correct the negative sociocultural factors that drive the risks for GBV FGM/C, HIV/AIDs, SRH, and TB by reaching the vulnerable women and girls with vital sexual and reproductive health information including COVID-19 mitigation strategies.

The Association for Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH), with support from United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) implemented a project titled “Risk Communication and Community Engagement intervention of the National COVID-19 Multi-sectoral Pandemic Response Plan”, with a proposed three-pronged approach: 1) broader risk communication and community engagement and sensitization for social and behavioural change; 2) alleviating the economic impact for the most vulnerable women and girls and their households; and 3) ensuring adolescent, youth and women’s constituencies play a role in monitoring the overall pandemic response and its appropriateness for women, men, girls, and boys.

The project is been implemented in three LGA namely Ibadan North, Oyo West, and Ogbomoso South Local Government Areas.

According to the study findings, the majority of the women and men expressed willingness’ to champion the cause of ending Gender-Based Violence, Child marriage and Covid-19 spread by taking appropriate risk mitigation actions.

The three-month pilot study involved about 5,065 consenting respondents’ women and girls including men and boys in three selected LGAs in Oyo state.

Ten (10) secondary schools and three (3) communities per LGA including Churches and Mosques were engaged for the project.

The messages were focused on educative information including Behavioural Change Communication on COVID-19, HIV/AIDS stigmatization, warning Signs on GBV risk communication, SRH Prevention of Child Marriage, and raising the critical consciousness of the community on FGM will be adequately shared with the participants/audience.

The project built the capacity of 60 RCCE community champions (20 per LGA) participants on increasing access of women and girls to information and services on GBV, HIV, TB & SRH Health services including SRH, dignity/menstrual and condoms.

A total of 6,065 (800 Men, 4,353 women and girls) participants including 30 persons with disabilities were reached with information and services on GBV, HIV, TB & SRH Health services including SRH, dignity/menstrual and condoms by the champions and during the outreaches. A total of 165 HIV tests were conducted as part of the project intervention. In addition, 2000 menstrual hygiene kits were distributed to adolescents and young girls in the three selected study LGAs.

The project has shown that with the continuum of services using the community approach including the provision of accurate information on COVID-19 prevention, SRH including FP and GBV by the gatekeepers, creation of referral linkages for TB, SRH and GBV within the community, provision of COVID-19 prevention guidelines will help address the negative impacts of COVID-19 within these communities in Oyo State, Nigeria.

There was the need to scale up the project to other LGAs and Nigerian states in order to build a national framework for mitigating the risks of Covid-19 and other negative health impacts of the pandemic in Nigeria.