Mzimba District Environmental Health Office on Saturday urged community health workers in the country to concentrate on contact tracing as a strategy in the fight against the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mzimba district environmental health officer Kurtz Somaliland said this on Saturday when he closed a two-day workshop for disease control surveillance assistants (DCSA) held at Malangazi Community Day Secondary School in the district.
The training was aimed at equiping community health workers with knowledge and skills to conduct contact tracing for Covid-19 patients.
Somaliland said contact tracing—the process of identifying, controlling and managing suspected cases of Covid-19—has the potential to eliminate the further transmission and spread of the disease since it engages a systematic follow-up during the 14 days after the date of last contact.
He said: “While we promote use of prevention measures in households and communities, we believe engaging health workers in contact tracing could also help in fighting Covid-19; hence, the training.”
However, Somaliland urged the participants to observe communication skills when engaging clients.
One of the senior disease control surveillance assistants, John Mwandira, thanked Mzimba health office for the training, saying it was an eye opener.
On his part, the training coordinator, Edward Gondwe, while thanking Jhpiego for bankrolling the workshop, urged the participants to read the training packages, saying the nature of their job requires one to have broader knowledge if they are to succeed in defeating Covid-19.
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