By Foday Moriba Conteh
The Health NGO FOCUS 1000 has conducted a training of trainers for religious leaders on communications on malaria prevention and control. The training session held on Wednesday, September 30, and hosted at the Charm’s Hotel in Aberdeen, Freetown, brought together about 24 people, mostly Imams and Pastors, from within the Western Area.
Organized with support from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Sierra Leone, the participants were drawn from the Kombra Network, the community engagement arm of FOCUS 1000.
The training, according to officials, is part of a CRS-funded project: ‘Engagement of religious stakeholders on malaria social behavior change communication,’ which is being implemented across six districts in the country – Port Loko, Kambia, Tonkolili, Koinadugu, Kailahun and Pujehun.
These districts, officials added, were identified by the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) as the highest burden malaria regions in the country.
Malaria is a priority public health concern for the Sierra Leone government, and it is ranked among the top three of the 27 diseases of interest for the Ministry of Health, alongside respiratory diseases.
The parasitic disease accounts for most mortalities and fatalities among children and it’s a major fueling factor of the country’s twin public health crisis – maternal and infant mortality.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, Chief Executive Officer of FOCUS 1000, said religious leaders are such an important group of authorities in society that they command huge influence, hence the idea of capacitating them so that they can use their various platforms to help propagate awareness raising messages.
“We put emphasis on the message, but we are also concerned about the messenger,” said Mr Jalloh, while explaining the idea behind using religious leaders to disseminate information to the masses.
He emphasized that while the content of the message is important to influence the target audience, the character of the person conveying the message can greatly influence its acceptability.
“You may have a good message but a bad messenger can spoil it,” he said.
“No group of people can be considered more credible than religious leaders,” he added.
Jalloh said that CRS had asked specifically to work with the religious leaders, but that they decided to include the rest of the Kombra Network pillars to add more impetus to the campaign.
The Kombra Network comprises five pillars – the religious arm, which comprises the Christian Action Group (CHRISTAG) and the Islamic Action Group (ISLAG); market women; traditional healers; civil society; and the media.
The beneficiaries of Wednesday’s training will form a cohort of trainers who will be dispatched to train Kombra Network members in the six districts covered by the project. The district trainees will then be tasked with cascading the training to chiefdom and village levels.
CHRISTAG and ISLAG developed messages specially tailored from religious scriptures, which speak to scientific messages on malaria prevention and control.
These messages, which have been developed into booklets for wider dissemination, were the focus of the training.
Dr Ramadan Jalloh, National Chairman of the Kombra Network, admonished the participants to take the training seriously, noting that the task at hand amounted to service to God as it is geared towards saving lives. Dr Jalloh, who is also the National Coordinator of ISLAG, said the word Kombra in Krio meant to love and care for one another, which is what God required of human beings.
“Kombra Network intends to encourage men to get more involved in the welfare of their children, instead of abandoning the entire responsibility in the hands of their wives,” he stated.
Like Dr Jalloh, Rev. Christiana Sutton Koroma, the National Coordinator of CHRISTAG, referenced biblical verses to explain the importance of the task of Kombra Network members, noting a particular biblical verse that enjoined the men folks to assume their responsibilities, which included their wives, children and other dependents.
“Any man who fails to take care of their wives is a foolish man,” she said.
