Faiths Act

Faith Ambassador, Mohamed Y. Turay told participants in his spearhead day-long workshop, held at the Benevolence Islamic Primary School, Calaba town, that volunteerism to actualize the faith dream of British former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, which is to rid malaria from the various communities is a  great move towards saving lives of Sierra Leoneans.

He spoke on Saturday, February 4, to a total of twenty participants who learnt the spelled facts of malaria being a killer disease in the world.

“Sierra Leone has had a great number of death tolls caused by malaria in the West African region, and quite a statistics of such has been children below the ages of five”, he states.

This purpose, he said, sets the needs for the five key messages approach to be sensitized the people; key messages such as: a family sleeps under a treated mosquito bed-net, report early signs and symptoms of malaria to the medics, strict the patient to Doctor’s prescribed doses, clean the various environments and taking pregnant women to the hospital for Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT) for malaria.

Faith Ambassador Turay said, the community participants are being trained to become Malaria Faith Champions (MFCs) and part of their work includes doing the spadework in disseminating the five key messages across the different localities and people to have a trend down in the level of malaria prevalence in the country.

An overview of Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation (TBFF) coined ‘faith’ with the fact that mosquitoes have got no limit target in transmitting the malaria parasite. Hawanatu Koroma, one of the facilitators of the program said, mosquitoes have known no religion, race, tribe or region of persons to afflict the malaria disease on. She explains:

“Female anopheles mosquitoes’ bite has been the only means by which the plasmodium parasite is transferred into the human body’s immune system that causes malaria”.

She emphasized the role of communication, and said the Malaria Faith Champions should endeavor in their new found roles to deliver the five key messages well so that a people’s clear understanding is achieved. She said the MFCs should always apply good ethics and approach in their efforts to pass these key messages on.

Exchange of perspectives on the prevention and control of malaria was done by members Muslims and Christian faiths among the participants. Facilitator Harding presented topics on: house to house advocacy explain approaches, roles of the various households, monitoring and data collection.

He said the MFCs are required to do routine visits to the homes they first visited on three occasions within an interval of two weeks to tally responses as to whether the five key messages are being understood well. Skit performance and presentation of certificates to the newly trained MFCs climaxed the workshop.

By Abu Bakarr Sulaiman Tarawally

This article was originally published in Sierra Express Media.