District Youth Officer for Dowa, Monica Neba Banda, has asked the Civil Protection Committee in the district to consider training youths on COVID-19 through support from the Government and partners for the youth networks to be capable in carrying out sensitization campaigns on COVID-19 to their fellow youths.
Banda assured the committee the training young people by using their already existing structures will bring great change since currently youths have different myths and perceptions towards COVID-19 like child bearing before death because of knowledge gap.
She said most of the youth in the district do not believe that COVID-19 is real hence, targeting them to dismiss their myths and beliefs that is a disease for the urban people.
Speaking during a District Civil Protection Committee held at the boma, Banda said the youth can broaden awareness campaigns to strengthen civil society relationships to promote correct, accurate and consistent messages on COVID-19 and Sexual Reproductive Health [SRH].
Banda said training of the youth themselves will advocate for the consideration of other key issues not COVID-19 alone, but other diseases which are within the communities saying this will be training the young community based dissemination agents.
She said the committee has done its part to civic educate the rural masses on COVID-19 preventive measures, lamenting that the youth who are not in majority are the ones not wanting to accept that COVID-19 is real and is killing people around globally
In his remarks, District Commissioner for Dowa, Alex Mdooko, said the district is being allocated K30 million saying this is not enough to carter for all COVID-19 planned activities for the district.
Mdooko asked the Central Government to take Dowa as one of the border districts since it has the presence of refugees and asylum seekers, hence requiring more funding.
He said in addition to the youths, empowering parents to take a leading role in the proper handling of their children, can also help sensitizing the communities on the precautionary measures of preventing the further spread of the Coronavirus in the district.
Dowa district has 246 youth clubs and 14 youth networks.
