Rumours about the impact of the COVID-19 vaccines have persisted in the East and Southern African region (ESAR). To address these issues, the RCCE Media Dialogue Subgroup in ESAR invites specialists to talk about the relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and reproductive health. This webinar exchanges also with journalists about how they can approach these issues in their reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Collective Service’s platform for rapid and in-depth support, the Collective Helpdesk, has been growing steadily since its launch earlier this year. The Helpdesk is a system that has been built to provide users with free technical expertise and resources on community-led response for public health outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies.
UK-Med, the READY Initiative, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, who are part of the Collective Service network, have now become contributing organizations of the Collective Helpdesk by extending their expertise and sharing resources on risk communication and community engagement.
UK-Med is a frontline medical aid charity based in the UK. Through its Register of medics who are rigorously trained for emergencies and its global network of health professionals, the charity is on-call to get to disaster zones at 24 hours’ notice and save lives.
The READY Initiative is augmenting capacity for non-governmental organizations to respond to large-scale infectious disease outbreaks. Led by Save the Children, the READY initiative is implemented in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, which leads on the RCCE component of the project, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, UK-Med, and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is part of the federal health portfolio of the Government of Canada. Its activities focus on preventing disease and injuries, responding to public health threats, promoting good physical and mental health, and providing information to support informed decision making.
The three organizations joined the Collective Helpdesk community of thematic experts that consists of UNICEF’s global Social Behavior Change and Accountability for Affected Populations teams, and the Collective Service Secretariat to truly make the platform a collective and collaborative service for users.
How to request support from the Collective Helpdesk?
Webpage | Email | Contact Form | Knowledge Base
The Collective Helpdesk, is offering social behaviour change and social science support for a limited period of time.
What is on offer?
Rapid and in-depth support for SBC and social science for Latin America and the Caribbean in English and Spanish for a limited period of time.
Who can benefit from this support?
Anyone from NGOs, CSOs, government ministries, academics, or international organizations who need assistance for social science on community-led responses.
How to reach out to the Collective Helpdesk?
Webpage | Email | Contact Form | Knowledge Base
Community Engagement and Accountability resources on the drought and food insecurity situation in the Horn of Africa.
Mask wearing is one of the main preventative measures to protect oneself and others against COVID-19. The harshest of the epidemic being hopefully behind us, let’s take a look back at how mask wearing was adopted and whether we can learn any lessons for any new epidemic that could appear. blablabla
Based on the data we have gathered, the mask wearing trend at global level shows a sharp rise at the beginning of the epidemic from March 20 to June 20, a plateau, and a slow and finally sharp decrease from March 22.
The same pattern can be observed for each region – with different levels – although WCAR, ESAR and MENA show a bit of a drop around end of 2020.
The most obvious driver to explain the evolution of mask wearing is the mask policy applied in each country.
At a global level there is a good correlation between the level of mask policy and mask wearing – except since March 2022.
Across all regions mask wearing increases with stricter policies. The only exception is Asia where mask wearing is constant (maybe because this has a widespread habit long before COVID-19 there?)
In terms of gender, women are more likely to report mask wearing.
With regard to age group, mask wearing increases with age – except for the oldest group