Community health workers plug vaccine misinformation, hesitancy

Fortune Muzarabani and Bongi Tshuma

For Cathy Dube (43), social media is more than just a platform to pass time and catch up with loved ones and neighbours.

Being a community health worker also known as a community health champion, she is tasked to help her community filter through thousands of messages daily, separating truth from lies, satire and everything else other than fact.

For the past eighteen months, she has been part of the COVID-19 local task force’s Community Awareness Team, working to sensitise communities on best practices and guidelines for staying safe and preventing COVID-19 infections.

“I could say my work is a calling. I moved to Bulawayo from our new settlement in Insiza district when my daughter had to start school in 2011 as we did not have a primary school close by. Back in the village, I used to work as a village development coordinator. When the opportunity to serve my community in Cowdray Park came, it was only natural for me to grab it with both hands as I felt that it was a higher calling. I feel like I am helping save lives when I help my neighbours, relatives and friends make the best choices for their health through shunning fake messages,” she said.

Community health workers work mostly on a voluntary basis but are often trained by government and councils, with support from development partners. Cathy is part of a team of more than 60 community health workers serving the city of Bulawayo’s 29 wards.  

Daily, this team of health workers supports and complements the work done by actors in the mainstream health sector to curb the spread of COVID-19 misinformation while mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on the Bulawayo community.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, community health workers spent most of their time in communities promoting best hygiene practices, advocating for child immunisation, and monitoring chronic patients. 

The pandemic has however brought new responsibilities.

Carol Phiri from Bulawayo’s Cowdray Park suburb said when the pandemic broke out, she took on the responsibility of addressing mourners on the importance of vaccination and the dangers of misinformation. At the time, funeral gatherings were the only permitted public gatherings where such vital information could be shared.

“As a community health worker, I would attend at least one funeral each week in my community and I would use these gatherings to encourage people to take the vaccine and also to dispel myths about the virus,” she said.

“I was one of the first people to take the vaccine in Cowdray Park during a campaign when various artistes came to get vaccinated, and it really helped many community members to get inoculated as they were aware of my comorbidities. I am diabetic, asthmatic and also on hypertension medication. I had to lead by example,” she added. 

In order to enhance COVID-19 related health seeking behaviour in communities, community health workers are now at the forefront of countering the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 through providing timely, accurate and adequate information about the COVID-19 virus and COVID-19 vaccines. 

As the frontline of the localised healthcare system, they now play a pivotal role in reducing the devastating effects of COVID19, and  the flood of unverified information on the pandemic, and vaccines.  

Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) executive director Itai Rusike, whose organisation closely works with community health workers, says community health workers have been equipped with media literacy skills to help fight the vaccine misinformation scourge in communities countrywide.

“Due to an information gap, we have been experiencing an increase in misinformation, disinformation, science denialism, anti-vaxxer sentiments and vaccine hesitancy resulting in low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Rusike. 

“In response, the Community Working Group on Health has been training Community Health Workers on COVID-19 so they become trusted sources of information for communities,” he added.

The city’s health services director, Dr Edwin Sibanda agrees that community health workers have become an asset and an indispensable component of the city’s emergency health communication response task force. 

 “The amount of fake health information circulating in our communities in the past two years has been unprecedented. It has made it necessary for health actors to be really proactive in creating messages that speak to day-to-day issues and that answer the various questions that people may have about their health and treatment issues,” said Dr Sibanda. 

“Working with community health workers from the communities has helped us achieve our goals as people have a tendency of believing people from their own communities. This has enabled us as a city to have a bottom-up approach to health communication by working with community health workers to understand the health information needs of communities and respond to these needs through the health workers,” he added.