Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
Oyo State government in partnership with La Vie Mot Global Mission (also known as the living word mission) commenced a two day training for health workers in Ona Ara and Ibadan South West Local Government areas of the state on hand washing.
The training which had in attendance major actions in the state primary health board, as well as other stakeholders was held at the Jubilee Conference Center Oke Ado Ibadan.
The coordinator of La Vie Mot Global Mission Marcus Williams stated that the essence of the programme is to educate health workers so as to have all the basic knowledge about hand washing in order to prevent infections as well as have an idea of how to keep the instrument safe.
” We are doing this just to ensure that our people are free from diseases. We want people to stay healthy, we want people to be able to contribute their quota to the development of the society.
“Water aid want people to live free from sickness and diseases and they should be able to do what they want in ways they want to be doing it.
“My message for the participants is to imbibe the culture of hand washing, ensure the use of nose mask, maintain social distancing, as well as ensuring they comply with all regulatory infection regulatory measures that they have asked them to put in place, when they are to meet with the pregnant women they should be able to communicate with them whatever information that have given to them in this training.”
Speaking on why two local government areas in the state benefitted from the initiative, Marcus said:
“For now water aid initiatives is targeting two local government areas because they have gotten small funding for this projects, and they want to saturate it so that it will be a litmus test for the state government which we hope they will leverage upon it and it will also become a bedrock for other funding opportunities that comes thier ways so they will be able to showcase what could be done with small money.”
In his contributions, Director for Logistics for Oyo State Primary Health Board, Olabode Kehinde emphasized on the need for the health workers to oversee to the maintenance of the equipments which will be sent to their local government for this exercise.
“we training health workers on simple hand washing techniques, on how to use the hand wash equipment that are deployed into their facilities, also training them on how to handle those machines.
The participants were trained on how to wash hands effectively in line with the WHO standard, we are just reminding them on how to train the populace on how to wash their hands effectively with soap and water, not only that we also want them to know that they are the ones that will be in charge of the maintainance of the equipments.”
One of the participants Mrs. Sosanya Janet Olabisi, of Adifase Health Center, Ibadan South West Local government, speaking with newsmen about the training said, “we have learnt a lot about the training, they taught us about Covid-19, and they also let us know that there are new waves in town now presently and the need to modify the way to present it to the society, like the first, second, third and the fourth waves.”
“Also we have been taught on how to take good care of ourselves in order for us not to contact this virus, they taught us about hand washing, they let us realized that they are going to provide us hand washing equipments, some have been distributed to the members of the publics which are not well maintained and now some will be deploy to us in the health centers to be use, we have been briefed about the techniques on how to operate those machines.
“They also taught us on proper ways to wash our hands, they told us about the importance of the covid-19 vaccines and presently there will be mass covid-19 vaccines at the health centers soon which people will be coming in to take their vaccines, and we should make sure that they are all registered for the vaccines and that they have the card that could be shown online that that they have been vaccinated. Sosanya said.
In her views, Mrs. Oguntona Oluremi, another participant, said, “I have learnt about infection control, about the purpose of washing our hands just to prevent ourselves from diseases in all aspects, as a health facility worker we use to tell our people the importance of hand washing.
“Hand washing prevents a lot of diseases, harmful bacterias and virus, because we use our hands to touch so many things and if don’t wash well before we use it to eat or drink it can inject infections into our body which can cause so many diseases and in order not to transmit the diseases to our clients, our families at home we need to wash our hands regularly. People should cultivate the habit of washing their hands on regular basis. Oguntona maintained.
