Zim hails African Union support in fight against Covid-19

Kadoma (New Ziana) –Zimbabwe on Friday launched the African Union Partnership to Accelerate Covid-19 Testing in Africa (PACT) initiative which will see the training and deployment of 1 000 volunteer community health workers in all the 10 provinces.

Through the Africa Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the African Union initiated the PACT program to assist member countries to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic which is ravaging the world.

The involves the training of volunteer community health workers in surveillance, contact tracing, infection control and hygiene practices in the home and support of people in self isolation.

In his speech read by deputy Health Minister Dr John Mangwiro at the launch of the program in Kadoma, Vice President and Health Minister Dr Constantino Chiwenga hailed the support from the African Union to fight the pandemic.

“We must therefore continue strengthening our preventive and response efforts at home, in health facilities, in public and social spaces in view of the fact that the world remains without a cure nor safe effective vaccine for widespread use against a background of increasing cases,” he said.

The PACT initiative was launched in June this year with the aim of preventing further transmissions and deaths as well as minimize social and economic harm associated with Covid-19.

“We therefore leave no one behind, and so we will redouble our efforts and scale up our Covid-19 response, train the required numbers of health care workers to support Covid-19 response, train and deploy the 1000 volunteer community health workers and ensure adequacy of laboratory and medical supplies for an effective and comprehensive approach to curb Covid-19 in our country,” said VP Chiwenga.

The volunteer health worker programme seeks to identify cultural groups, key religious and traditional leaders to disseminate Covid-19 behaviour change information and strategies for better compliance and coping with the societal transformation during and post Covid-19 lockdown era.

Zimbabwe has lost 268 lives and recorded over 9 000 infections since the first Covid-19 case was confirmed on March 20 this year.

New Ziana