As a platform for civil society, Bangladesh Health Watch (BHW) has been implementing research and advocacy activities since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Following this, a webinar meeting was organized on 31 August 2020, to share experiences on the community engagement of development organizations in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The experiences were presented by Dr. Badiul Alam

Majumdar, Country Director, The Hunger Project, Bangladesh; Dr. Morseda Chowdhury, Associated Director, Health, BRAC and Md. Fazlul Haque, Senior Director, SAJIDA Foundation. The webinar was moderated by the convener of Bangladesh Health Watch, Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury. Government officials, representatives from development agencies, public health experts, members of the Covid-19 Advisory Committee, academics, and journalists, representatives from INGOs and NGOs, and members of BHW Working Group members attended in the meeting. He welcomed all panelists and guests.

In the welcome speech the moderator Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury said, ` people’s participation is the precondition of development. There are successes in health sector i.e. ORS, EPI vaccination, awareness on Family Planning etc and obviously these are the result of community engagement and peoples` participation. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, some NGOs are doing excellent job and BHW wants to showcase these bright examples and successes.’ Today three leading NGOs will share their experiences working with community in response to Covid -19 to avert community transmission.

 

Experience of The Hunger Project, Bangladesh: Dr. Badiul Alam Majumdar,

Country Director: In the presentation Dr. Majumder highlighted the success and challenges of their community engagement initiative in the name of `Corona Resilient Village’. The Hunger Project operated the activities across the country since the end of March to protect the people from

corona virus. `Corona Resilient Village’ is a decentralized and voluntary-led community-led initiative. This initiative works in four stages - first, to mobilize people to give them the confidence that could be change maker of their own life; Second, to create awareness about various health rules; Third, to assist in identifying and providing health care to people who are infected or showing signs of symptoms; And fourth, to compile a list of people at risk of coronavirus and provide them with various assistance.

 

The Success:

• Corona Resilient Village’ is volunteer led activities
• Operating vigorously in more than twelve hundred villages and in more than three hundred villages and thousands of volunteers are involved in this initiative.
• Nearly 3 million people are aware on safe health and hygiene behavior during COVID.
• Corona Resilient villages are found relatively low rates of infection and mortality compared to other villages.
• So far, the THP helped about one lakh families by collecting money, food and other items worth around Tk 40 million.
• THP helped 36,000 people to come under the government's social security program.
• Volunteers helped farmers to cut paddy in 42 acres of land voluntarily.

 

The challenges

1. Authorities' exaggerations and misleading statements made peoples reckless.
2. Local government institutions have been neglected for a long time and they have not been able to cope with such pandemic. As a result, it was not possible to involve the community under the leadership of elected representatives.
3. Various rumors, misinterpretations by the religious leaders about the virus confused people and thus it become more complex to understand people at large.
4. Due to technical constraints, THP faced difficulties to maintain regular contact with volunteers and make them proficient.

 

Experience of BRAC: Dr. Morseda Chowdhury, Associate Director, Health: Dr. Morseda shared the experience of BRAC and she said, the Government of Bangladesh has already undertook various programs to prevent and spread the infection of Covid-19. As part of this, another new program - 'Community Support Team' (CST) has been launched under the joint leadership of the Department of Health and the Department of Family Planning of Directorate of Health Services and Family Planning. CST launched with the aim to reduce the level of infection among the community people, increase the capacity of hospitals and reduce the risk of deaths. BRAC built partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP), UNICEF, the World Food Program (WFP) and various voluntary organizations and a2i and icddr,b are providing the IT supports. BRAC followed two pronged strategies i) encourage people to use masks and ii) identifying infected individuals and families to ensure stay at home.

 

The Success:

• Build awareness and contact-tracing.
• CST provides prescriptions at home and supervise round-the-clock.
• CST assists low-income families and delivers medicines and food items to their doorsteps.
• Fifty four wards of Dhaka North City Corporation is covered with the activities since June.
• 484 volunteers (276 female and 208 male) have been trained.
• A total of 175 CSTs are currently working and the number of CSTs will be gradually increased to 462 (964 members).
• Posters, leaflets, stickers and messages for miking in local areas and mosques have already been prepared. Miking messages are ongoing in all the 54 wards.
• A total of 26,060 home visits completed , tested 21,575 people, of whom 7,063 have been identified as 'verified virus fighters' and provided medical support, food and other assistance.
• ‘Community Corona Prevention Committee’ has been formed in each village of two Upazilas of Gazipur to provide support and services through CST.

 

Experience of SAJIDA Foundation: Md. Fazlul Haque, Senior Director -

 

Development  Programme: Mr.  Fazlul  Haque  presented  the  experience  of  SAJIDA

Foundation in fighting against the   corona   virus.  SAJIDA Foundation   has    successfully implementing their programs in  26   districts  by   engaging people from all walks of life to prevent  Covid-19  pandemic. SAJIDA Foundation formulates parallel action plans at 3 special levels for the successful implementation of each task. The first step was community engagement. SAJIDA Foundation created its own program staff and area-based volunteer pool and trained them on pandemics and what to do's and what to not’s. In the second phase, they formulate various protocols / protection policies as part of preparation, as well as service preparation agreements with various local governments, including the Department of Health, and created provision of the necessary skilled manpower. In the third phase, SAJIDA Foundation started operating the hospital quickly.

 

The Success:

• Received treatment of 502 COVID positive patients including 75 with ICU services.
• Installation of 569 hand washing devices.
• Awareness raising leaflets have been distributed to about 1.5 million people.
• Provides food, hygiene kits and cash support among 332,000 extremely poor people.
• Assists 1781 farmers to deliver their products safely to consumers.
• Through hot line health and psycho-social support have been provided to 10,000 people.
• SAJIDA Foundation provides direct and indirect services to about 3.5 million people in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

 

The challenge

• To create awareness among the poor and disadvantages people of wearing musk, maintaining social distance during the corona pandemic.
• To create income opportunities of the poor families.

 

Open Discussion:

 

Dr. Zakir Hussain, Member, Working Group, BHW: Dr. Zakir said, public health specialist should be the leader of government health system. When the public health specialist take the leadership they definitely will give more importance on community engagement. He requested to all organizations to raise the demand.

Dr. A J Faisel, Adviser on COVID-19 of MoHFW, Sylhet Division and Member, Working Group, BHW: He emphasized to ensure community engagement at urban areas based on the rural experiences. He requested all for piloting this initiative at least two districts primarily.

Dr. Mohammad Mushtuq Husain, Adviser, IEDCR: Dr. Mushtuq Husain said, community engagement is very important to contain any pandemic. Government is trying to engage community in different situations like zoning, lock down in different areas of Dhaka could be taken as good example. But these good examples should replicate all over the Bangladesh. To reduce the spread of the virus community can play a strong role in isolation and quarantine. We all should convince our government to use this power of community engagement to reduce the infection rate and contain the virus successfully.

Dr. Lelin Choudhury, Public Health Specialist and Chairman, Health and Hope Hospital: Dr. Lelin Choudhury called to stakeholders including government, private, NGOs to work together and involved community to fight against this deadly virus. He observed that, government dependent too much on bureaucrats rather than the public representatives and this is the obstacle to involve the whole of society against the pandemic. Sometimes government trying to create a false sense of safety which should be stopped.

 

Other speakers said that, community should be engaged in a scientific ways and based on the research findings. Though at the onset neither the government nor the NGOs or private sectors were prepared to fight against the pandemic but, now we all know our weakness and strength. So, we should all need to cooperate each other to contain the pandemic successfully. The projects which are implementing by the NGOs should also be evaluated and the findings should share with all.

 

Closing remarks:

The moderator Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury sum-up the session and said, the government, public representatives, non-governmental organizations and NGOs should work together to prevent the pandemic. He also urged to the government to take effective measure to provide necessary financial assistance to the appropriate NGOs to increase public awareness and community engagement in the containment of corona virus.

He said, NGOs should also take effective initiatives in promoting basic health rules for COVID. He also requested to media personnel to highlight the importance of public participation in corona prevention. He hoped that, the donor agencies will also provide quick and necessary financial assistance to the community engagement projects.

Finally, the moderator concluded the session with thanks to all the panelists and guests.

 

Attendance Webinar on Community Engagement in COVID – 19 pandemic: Lesson Learned from BRAC, Hunger Project and SAJIDA Foundation

 

SI	Name	Designation and Organization
1.	Mr. Badiul Alam Majumdar	Country Director, The Hunger Project
2.	Dr. Morseda Chowdhury	Associate Director, Health, BRAC
3.	Md. Fazlul Haque	Senior Director - Development Programme, SAJIDA Foundation
4.	Dr. A M Zakir Hussain	WG, BHW
5.	Dr. Jahiruddin Ahmed,	Board of Directors, SMC and AG, BHW
	Member
6.	Dr. Md. Maruf Haque Khan	Lecturer, DPHI, BSMMU
7.	Dr. AJ Faisel,	Adviser on COVID-19, MoHFP and WG, BHW
8.	Adhish Das	THP
9.	Al Amin Mia	DF, THP
10.	K M Zahiduzzaman	Country Director, HOPE Foundation
11.	Azim Mohammad Uddin	Sr. Adviser, iPas
12.	Dr. Md. Tariqul Islam	Director, SAJIDA Foundation
13.	Forhad
14.	Iqbal Masud	Director, DAM
15.	Shajeda Sweety	ATN News
16.	Jahangir Hossain
17.	Jamir
18.	Khorshed Alam
19.	Masrurul Islam	Country Director, Marie Stopes Bangladesh
20.	Md. Mainul Islam
21.	Gias Uddin
22.	Mirza
23.	Dr. Mithila Faruque	Assistant Professor-BUHS
24.	Mizanur	THP
25.	Morje Biswas	THP
26.	Moutushi Kabir	Director, Communications and Outreach, BRAC
27.	Nasima Akhter
28.	Palash Chandra Banik	Assistant Professor-BUHS
29.	Prof. Dr. Pradip Kumar Sen  Gupta	Professor and Head, Department of Epidemiology-BUHS
30.	Prof Dr. A K M Fazlur Rahman
31.	Prof Dr Tarikul Islam	Member, National Advisor Committee on COVID-19
32.	Rasheda K. Choudhury	Executive Director CAMPE
33.	AKM Jashim Uddin	Director, ADAB
34.	Samar Roy	Media Consultant
35.	Md. Rafiqul Islam	Director, FNB
36.	Rehman Atik	Sr. Programme Manager, TIB
37.	Samar Roy	Media Consultant
38.	Sohel Rana	THP
39.	Dr. Syed Masud Ahmed	Director, UHC, JPGSPH and WG, BHW
40.	Dr. Zahirul Islam	Adviser, Sida
41.	Dr. Lenin Choudhury	Public Health Specialist and Chairman, Health and Hope Hospital
42.	Shashanka Boron Roy	THP
43.	Shishir Moral	Prothom Alo
44.	Tawsia Tajmim	The Business Standard
45.	Dr. Mohammad Mushtuq Hussain	Adviser, IEDCR
46.	Jayanta Kar
47.	Md. Mostafizur Rahman
48.	Dr. Ubaidur Rob	Country Director, Population Council and WG, BHW
49.	Dr. Md. Khairul Islam	Regional Director, WaterAid and WG, BHW
50.	Maher Mita
51.	Dr. AMR Chowdhury	Convener, BHW
52.	Dr. Yasmin Ahmed	Advisor, BHW
53.	Shaikh Masudul Alam	Chief Coordinator
54.	Md. Mofakker Morshed Khan	Coordinator, BHW
55.	Mahruba Khanam	Programme Officer, BHW
56.	Rouf Sarker	JPGSPH