Community Engagement
Heart Heroes Fiji recognizes the need to assist the Ministry of Health and Medical Services with targeted information and awareness sessions on ARF and RHD in our communities. These sessions are designed to inform, educate and support our communities capability to:
- understand what is ARF and RHD
- recognize the symptoms
- act with haste in seeking immediate medical advise
In the last decade, RHD has affected school aged children in vast numbers and without action on this front more and more of our children will be susceptible to this preventable disease.
Community Outreach at Rotuma Island
Earlier this year, together with personnel from the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, we conducted awareness sessions in all primary schools in Rotuma Island. Whilst students waited for registration and echo screening, we held talks on sore throat, skin sores, ARF and and RHD. What we found out during our awareness session, was the lack of knowledge on RHD amongst the school children and the teachers.
After each awareness session questions were asked to gauge if they understood and the children were very engaged and responded correctly.
None of these families knew anything about RHD and so with the limited time that we had, we managed to talk them through from sore throat, ARF to RHD and the importance of WHY their child needs to take their monthly BENZA. There were questions on how it happened, who else apart from their child, how long will they have RHD, symptoms, what caused it, how can a sore throat cause RHD, how can they prevent other siblings from getting RHD, these were the common questions asked by parents.
We also addressed the importance of sanitation, personal hygiene and health seeking behavior and how addressing this issues are very important to the prevention of strep infection and how this could prevent a child from the dangers of ARF and RHD.
Information and Awareness Session for Vanua Balavu, Lau Community
People living in rural communities have always found it challenging to access medical care. So, for the village community in Vanua Balavu, being able to seat through an awareness session was very crucial for their child’s health.
We noticed that many of the parents were eager to learn more about ARF and RHD and how to prevent it. In almost every child we met we could recognize skin sore infections. This strengthened our desire to engage with these parents individually and in groups answering any questions they may have.
We were also able to host discussions and knowledge sessions with school children who were more than eager to know about ARF and RHD and the risks they pose to their health.
Our sessions centered around importance of sanitation and hygiene, awareness on ARF and RHD prevention, symptoms and discussions on available treatment. we believe that in enlightening this community many of them can take these messages and share with others in their daily interactions. One thing we are grateful for is seeing the appreciation expressed by the parents after the sessions and this is a sign that our communities can improve their health seeking behavior to avoid late detection and serious health issues.
