Reaching more people in Burkina Faso with multimedia health education

The importance of good health education

Education about hygiene and sanitation is vital in Africa to reduce the high mortality rates. Every hour a hundred children in Africa die of diarrhoea, but with the regular use of latrines or washing hands with soap after defecating, the risks of diarrhoea can be reduced with more than fifty percent.

Sahel Solidarité organises water hygiene information sessions for villagers in the Bokin area. These villagers often have limited access to information about the use of water sites in the villages and hygiene in general. In the meetings these and other health related topics are addressed. Until recently during the meetings the consequences of good or bad hygiene were shown on drawings or photographs on cards. 

New method

In cooperation with The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), employees and volunteers of Sahel Solidarité (students, teachers, farmers and many more) were trained in the use of computers and tools such as PowerPoint. They also received training in using digital cameras. With the digital cameras, Sahel Solidarité employees and health volunteers go into the villages and take pictures of good and bad practices in healthcare. These pictures are then pasted into a PowerPoint presentation which is shown in villages in the Bokin area as a replacement for the cards in the meetings.

Objectives

• Develop new health education methodologies– Thinking of new ways to use information and communication technology (ICT) in the field of health care and water education.
• Reinforcing knowledge about ICT – Training both the project staff and extension workers in Bokin in the use of computers, digital cameras and other digital tools. Some of these skills will be used by Sahel Solidarité internally, for instance for data-processing or for computer maintenance. Other skills such as learning how to use digital cameras and make PowerPoint presentations can be used in the meetings in the villages.
• Improving internal communication – Making it easier for the central bureau of Sahel Solidarité in Ouagadougou to reach its health workers in Bokin.

Results so far

The project has proved to be a success ever since its first day. Health meetings in villages were previously visited by only about fifteen people, but with the new method about 300 people join each session. Both young people and old people find the PowerPoint presentations entertaining and educative. An unforeseen result of the project is that people from outside the targeted villages now also hear about the meetings and actually attend them. In questionnaires villagers say that

“We are now better informed about various water hygiene and sanitation topics including the potential health risk of faeces. We now keep our latrines more tidy, both in schools and at home and we have become accustomed to washing our hands more after using the latrines.”

The health workers and other volunteers of Sahel Solidarité who are trained with the new method are also very enthusiastic about the approach. According to one of the members of Sahel Solidarité the volunteers now find their work more challenging and more and more people get trained.

Part of the project was also to establish a better internet connection between Sahel Solidarité’s headquarters in Ouagadougou and in the field office in the Bokin area. Contacting each other is now faster and easier. Also a website was set up so that Sahel Solidarité and its activities are more visible internationally.    

Future possibilities

This project shows that it is possible to reach a large number of people with only few resources. It is therefore very suitable for replication on a larger scale if the project team works out the concept.