HEALTH workers in Chivhu have called on government to prioritise community education on COVID-19 after a family held a normal two-day funeral wake for a dead relative whose remains were repatriated from South Africa on Saturday.<\/p>\n
According to local health officials, over 100 people on Sunday attended Trust Tokoda\u2019s funeral wake in Mombeyarara village under Headman Madamombe\u2019s area. Tokoda died in Pretoria on July 17.<\/p>\n
The family reportedly followed the traditional burial rites and ignored government guidelines.<\/p>\n
Government recently declared that all repatriated bodies, except deaths by accident should be treated as COVID-19 deaths to ensure strict measures on burial were observed.<\/p>\n
Heath officials who spoke to NewsDay said government should provide resources for effective awareness campaigns on COVID-19, especially among rural folk since some families were not following the government guidelines out of
\nignorance.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe Nurses Association Mashonaland East provincial chairperson Stewart Mudzingwa said monitoring of suspected COVID-19 cases was not done properly in communities because health workers did not have enough personal protective equipment and transport to go the affected areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government should not underestimate the importance of community education in the fight against the deadly virus. People continue to stigmatise COVID-19 cases because of lack of adequate knowledge on the disease. There is also need for collective efforts of various government ministries to put resources together to effectively fight COVID-19,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chikomba district COVID-19 taskforce acting chairperson Monica Mutimba said Tokoda\u2019s body arrived late Saturday evening, hence burial could not be conducted overnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe district COVID-19 taskforce was making efforts to ensure that the funeral was held in adherence to government guidelines, but the body arrived late,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HEALTH workers in Chivhu have called on government to prioritise community education on COVID-19 after a family held a normal two-day funeral wake for a dead relative whose remains were repatriated from South Africa on Saturday. According to local health officials, over 100 people on Sunday attended Trust Tokoda\u2019s funeral wake in Mombeyarara village under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":24871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1361,7],"tags":[1279,1388],"class_list":{"0":"post-26081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-coronavirus-in-zimbabwe","9":"category-files","10":"tag-coronavirus-in-zimbabwe","11":"tag-covid-19"},"yoast_head":"\n