The effectiveness of strategic health communication in Zimbabwe: A case of Masvingo Provincial School Vaccinations

Abstract

Zimbabwe has been hit hard by a variety of diseases, with AIDS, Covid-19, Cancer, Typhoid andCholera being some of the most recent ones. Lots of lives have been lost in the process resultingin some of the diseases, like AIDS and Covid-19, being declared pandemics in the country. Inan effort to minimise fatalities, the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ), through the Ministryof Health and Child Care (MoHCC), has resorted to some proactive and reactive measureswhich include prescribing safety precautions, vaccination and treatment of infected citizens.A close look at responses to the initiatives, for instance, in the fight against the Covid-19pandemic, demonstrates mixed feelings in the majority of the populace resulting in fatalmoves like refusing to observe precautionary measures and vaccination hesitancy. The samekind of response seems to be transpiring with efforts towards vaccination against diseaseslike COVID-19 and cervical cancer in schools, which has allegedly seen some parents forbiddingtheir children from taking the doses by going as far as making them bunk-off school each timesuch exercises are scheduled to take place. This is quite worrisome for an environment thatis being frequented by pandemics of quite alarming magnitudes. In this regard, the currentqualitative study sort to analyse the impact of strategic health communication in Zimbabwetaking Masvingo province as a case. It employed interviews and focus group discussions(FGDs) with purposively sampled schools’ teachers, students and parents to generate datathat was analysed using the Conceptual Model for Evaluating Emergency Risk Communication(CMEERC) in Public Health.