Fighting COVID-19 in Guyana Through Community Outreach

How USAID is arming communities throughout the Southern Caribbean with information that helps them fight the pandemic

When COVID-19 hit the shores of the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, it caused pandemonium, disruption, and fear in the hearts of people who had no previous experience with this unknown and deadly virus. For everyone around the globe, life as we knew it changed.

Our world was now filled with masks, hand sanitizer, physical distancing, and a mass exodus from the office as many people transitioned to working from home. All of this disruption and change introduced a unique challenge: how to educate and inform people of this new disease and how to prevent it.

Breakthrough ACTION Guyana created this poster to encourage mask wearing while in public to help stop the spread of COVID-19. It was part of the public communications campaign on COVID-19 created by Breakthrough ACTION Guyana, a USAID partner.

In Guyana, USAID partnered with Breakthrough ACTION Guyana to develop a public communications plan for the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Social and Behavior Change (SBC) campaign designed to combat COVID-19. Breakthrough ACTION is USAID’s global social and behavior change flagship program led by Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs.

The aim of the campaign was to educate Guyanese about the dangers of COVID-19 and how to prevent its spread.

To do this, Breakthrough ACTION Guyana created informational posters, public service announcements for radio and television, and a social media campaign targeting the general population, particularly in the hinterland regions of the country.

Another critical component of the campaign: targeting the spread of misinformation and rumors. Here are some of the tactics.

Community Engagement. Developed a COVID-19 training curriculum, and recruited and trained four regional support coordinators and 18 community facilitators, reaching more than 6,000 people in four regions via face-to-face community engagement.

Addressing Uncertainty and Perceptions and Managing Misinformation. Published a story series called “Myth Busters” in print and social media. This series was created from comments and questions which were tracked by trained Ministry of Health staff, and also based on feedback from the regional coordinators and community volunteers. The team created social media posts and newspaper public service announcements showing facts which debunked myths about COVID-19.

Public Communication. Launched the “Protecting You, Protecting Us” campaign, with three television spots in three languages, five radio spots in five languages, posters, banners, and social media posts. Supported a COVID-19 storyline and placed radio spots in eight episodes of the long-running, popular radio serial drama “Merundoi.” The popular, weekly radio serial drama addresses different health and social issues, including HIV and AIDS, gender-based violence and hot topics like the new oil and gas sector. The series airs on several radio stations in Guyana. Disseminated more than 180 DVDs/flash drives with COVID-19 prevention messages interspersed with popular music from DJs to shops, restaurants, taxis, minibuses, and gold mines.

This information continues to be crucial, as Guyana, along with the other countries in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, are facing additional COVID-19 waves and spikes of new infections daily.

However, these countries are also mounting vaccination campaigns that encourage their citizens to get the jabs. The U.S. Government has committed to donating hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally, including to countries in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. To date, the region has also received close to 550,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX facility which facilitates the distribution of vaccines globally.

This poster encouraged the public to practice physical distancing to help stop the spread of COVID-19. It was part of the public communications campaign on COVID-19 created by Breakthrough ACTION Guyana with USAID’s support.

“The Ministry of Health wanted our support to assist with SBC around COVID-19 vaccines. I, along with two of my other Guyanese colleagues, volunteered our time to support the vaccine rollout by reviewing the SBC materials which the ministry produced. We also developed a rumor tracking system which the ministry is currently using to support the vaccine campaign,” said Sean Wilson, Breakthrough ACTION Guyana’s chief of party and country representative.

He and his colleagues also lent their support to the Ministry of Health’s rollout campaign for COVID-19 vaccines earlier this year in an effort to combat vaccine hesitancy among the Guyanese population. The campaign reached an estimated 554,100 people in eight languages, across all communications channels, including television, radio, print, and social media. That’s about 70 percent of the country’s residents.

“USAID has provided more than $28 million to address the impacts of the pandemic in the Caribbean,” said Regional Representative of USAID/Eastern and Southern Caribbean Clinton White. “USAID delivers equipment, technical assistance, training, capacity building, communication material, health systems strengthening, life-saving diagnostics, treatment and more so that partner countries will be better prepared to respond to global health crises.”

As the pandemic still rages on, USAID is committed to supporting organizations like Breakthrough ACTION that are on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19.

About the Author

Ayesha Lett is the Development Outreach and Communications Specialist at USAID Eastern and Southern Caribbean located in Barbados.