~ for feedback on how to improve efforts in the fight against COVID-19

THE United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has partnered with the Ministry of Public Health to launch a digital platform to facilitate community engagement to improve efforts to address the COVID-19 epidemic and to protect children from its direct and knock-on consequences. These include food shortages, strained healthcare systems, violence and lost education.

A press statement from the organisation outlined that the platform will allow receipt of further feedback on how to improve efforts in the fight. The platform is being launched with a Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey on COVID-19. It will seek to ascertain what individuals know about COVID-19, how they perceive the situation and how they behave in response to it, with an aim to provide a better understanding of how people experience the crisis caused by the coronavirus.

The statement said the survey will be conducted every two weeks, covering all 10 regions, and will take about 10 minutes to complete and no names will be recorded.
It will use combined methods: interviews conducted by phone (you may receive a call at home) and online surveys (you may receive an email asking to complete the survey). In the hinterland, health-care workers, social workers, and/or community leaders may request your participation (using face-to-face interviews respecting social distancing). Or persons can visit the UNICEF or MoPH website to take the survey during week one and week three of each month.

The interviewers will not request money, cellphone credit or any other human, financial or material resources, or request to see or meet respondents. All the information will remain strictly confidential and only used for the purpose of this survey. While participation is voluntary, support from all is needed.

It provides an opportunity to inform efforts and strategies towards flattening the curve and stopping the spread of the epidemic. Findings will go directly towards improving the response to fight COVID-19 as well as towards UNICEF’s emergency programmes, including through the provision of hygiene items, protective equipment, life-saving information and other support to healthcare systems or access to continuous services.

A report issued this month by the United Nations warned that children risk being among the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. While children have been largely spared from the direct health effects of the disease up to this point, the crisis is having a profound effect on their overall well-being. Children are being affected by the socio-economic impacts and, in some cases, by the mitigation measures implemented to stem the spread of the disease.

In Guyana, UNICEF’s COVID-19 response focuses on working with partners to help reduce the transmission of the virus and mitigate its impact on children, while ensuring that essential services for children continue. This includes: ensuring access and availability of key supplies and services for children, women and vulnerable populations; scaling up messages about handwashing with soap; supporting governments with the procurement of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers; supporting distance-learning opportunities for children who cannot access school; providing mental health and psychosocial support to children and families affected; and helping to maintain essential immunisation and other services for children.

“The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest struggle the world has seen in generations. Children and young people are among the most severely impacted by the knock-on effects of COVID-19, so it is critical to hear from children and families on how they adjust behaviours and are coping,” said UNICEF’s Country Representative Sylvie Fouet.