BY BRIGHT MALOPA
The President addressed the nation on Sunday during which he revealed that K185 million was spent on communication related programs . This is relatively good budget. But why is it that there’s little behavioral change?
The president must press for evaluation and monitoring reports on this From my cursory observations, there are serious flows on how communication has been packaged. It is not strong enough to invoke emotions that can constrict People’s thought process into the path of fear and hope. If people are not afraid of this pandemic, their behavioral pattern will not change.
Covid becomes fatal when a Covid infected person comes into contact with a person in vulnerable group. The strategy to address this is to create 2 characters from which information can be built to protect or save people in the vulnerable groups.
These are
1) a hero
2) a Villain
Every PR Exercise starts with a human being having an aha!! moment. What is our aha! Moment? Is it before or after when we report an infection, stats increase or when we loose a person Heroes Identify the heroes in the Covid fight.
Those in the front line doing their best to save the vulnerable, those who are observing the recommended measures which in the end limits exposure to the vulnerable and those of good will helping out Villain Important for the information to identify the villains in their communication package – those who are responsible for the many deaths we have because their conduct exposed the virus to the vulnerable.
Create strong messages that implies if you don’t mask up or sanitise, it is because you want to kill a person.
The current messages being propagated suggests that the Audience has not been properly casted. The current massages are flat and have only one group. The listener believes the message is intended for someone else not them.
But there are several groups within the Covid community that need specific information;
What to do to avoid contacting and spreading the virus?
What to do when infected?
What to do post Covid-19?
The ultimate goal of this campaign is to make people decide by conduct on whether they want to be a hero or villain of the fight against Covid.
I’m not too sure about the composition of the Covid task force but the content matter in the Covid information suggests to me that we are missing other skills.
Clearly we have public health specialists but the various prescriptions we are getting on which leaves or vegetation to chew tells me we need internal medicine and pulmonologists people to add content as well as social and psychologists to help us deal with the aftermath.
The president talked about recruiting more personnel in the health sector. This is good. The current lot are tired and exhausted. Whilst there maybe risk allowance associated to this, I would recommend that government consider offering risk insurance to all frontline personnel. Many are being exposed in the course of doing their work.
Finally our hopes are pinned on vaccine. There’s alot of negative publicity on the vaccine from religious pussyfoots to naysayers and outright Covid denialists.
The communication strategy should at least devise means to debunk this negativity whilst offering hope for the timelines regarding when the vaccine will be in the country as well as the priority list.
This will help prepare people ahead of what may be considered a matter of life and death.
Whether you are dealing with civil servants or the general public or, Journalist are looking for stories that connects with us “human beings.
President ‘inaugural speech asking the general public and his opponents to give him the benefit of doubt is a good example of a story that brings people together and inspires the same to feel something powerful whenever possible
To be honest this is the nice piece. It is well articulated and at the right time. The way things are its really worrisome. Can you imagine, several people with severe respiratory signs when referred to central hospitals they are putting their feet on the ground for fear of being testing covid positive and get quarantined. Another set back we are having is the negativity people hold on vaccine. Psychologists must also be involved and whenever the vaccine comes either the president or the vice or any other top figure must have the first jab on tv live broadcast the same way the former US vp did. Another nasty thing is the fear many people hold on the way the nasal swab is performed. Its really nasty and painful. Engineers must regroup and try to device a friendly nasal swab technique if not possible then either the use of analgesics or local anaethesia to relief the nasal pain people experiences must be tried if they can’t interfere with the results. You will be shocked to find out that some of the brought in deads test ncov positive because the relatives, neighbours and the patients declined to go for referral work up and management for the fear of the unknown and the above mentioned things. People have got astray and out their are engaged in risky behaviours of inhaling blue gum and pawpaw leaves concorction steams and few sustain burns after the hot concortion soup accidentally fell on their feet. Other people turn addicts for fear of this monster. I hope the past regime interviewed the healthy educators and if they successfully passed the interviews, then this is their time to move in to bring hope and courage in the people in daring all sorts of fake news against all the simple measures that could help put on hold the rampant spread of the virus like wild fire. Remember unnecessary commotion is dangerous because it brings in so many casualties than sober does.