Nomad Simon

The Story of Cholera - Krio - Sierra Leone

Before leaving Atebubu  - a cholera affected community in Ghana - we screened the wonderful animation from Global Health Media "The Story of Cholera" at a community meeting. The general ‘WASH’ environment - shown in earlier posts - is fairly typical of cholera ‘hot spots’ that I’ve observed across West Africa this year – a semi-urban slum, with very little sanitation, lots of open defecation, use of ‘flying toilets’, and reliance on unprotected shallow wells for drinking water.

Representatives of various community groups were invited to a meeting on a Saturday morning. These included representatives of: market women, hairdressers, beekeepers, the Ghana Red Cross, Youth Groups as well as the Cholera Task Force of the local authority. A preliminary discussion revealed that very few people had a real understanding of the causes of cholera, although many could ‘repeat’ the behaviour, such as hand-washing with soap, which could prevent it. 

“The story of cholera” was screened followed by more discussion. Despite most of the audience not understanding the English narration, the group were able describe all the key messages in the film; about how cholera was transmitted, and what the boy - who is the ‘agent of change’ – had done to help his community rid itself of cholera. All agreed that their community should be capable of doing something similar for themselves. However, there was also some conflict obvious between the “authorities” and the “community” about who should do what for whom. Never-the-less, the seeds of a community based solution were sown, and all were agreed that if they had more exposure to tools like the cholera film, and other visual materials, they could work together to spread knowledge about cholera and good hygiene around the community, and decide on what actions they could take to clean up their environment. I shared this experience with the film's producers who gave permission to translate into any local languages that would be useful in the fight against cholera.

From Ghana I was called to Sierra Leone where the Cholera outbreak, which had started in some rural areas back in January, had hit Freetown and flared up into a major epidemic that had reached over ten thousand cases and was growing at 1,000+ a week, prompting the Sierra Leone Government to declare a national emergency in mid August.

My Unicef & other colleagues on the cholera task force agreed that Krio and other local language versions of the film would fit with the Social Mobilisation programme and we commissioned Talking Drum Studios to produce the local language versions. 

Teach your children well :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkaKwXddT_I

Atebubu is small town of about 100,000 people. They have had no piped water since April '12 when cholera first appeared this year. There have been some 280 cases of cholera since and at least 8 deaths. This woman told us she had had cholera. The well she is drawing water from, has been disinfected but is still unprotected, and can be easily recontaminated - if only by the rope and bucket which lie around on the ground. When it rains the streets flood, washing rubbish and faeces into the wells.

Men - Public Toilet Atebubu, Brong Ahafo, Ghana

Canoes beached in a creek on Khunyi

Nomads of the Sea - Fanti Canoes from Ghana in Bonfi Port Conakry Guinea.

Khounyi on Kabak - Forecaria Guinea.

I had wanted to tell more of the story of Cholera in Guinea over the last couple of weeks, but the various frustrations of working in an environment that is challenging, even when you are living way above street level, rather hampered that idea. However - last weekend I visited Kabak Island where the Cholera epidemic started this year. Happily on the island it's more or less under control now - thanks to sterling hygiene promotion activities by the Guinea Red Cross, distribution of chorine for household water treatment and a rather controversial trial vaccination campaign.