Reducing the Barriers to the Prevention and Control of Covid-19 Spread in Nigeria:

The Role of Health Education

Abstract

Corona Virus (COVID-19) is a deadly infectious disease, caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-Cov2) discovered in December 2019 in WUHAN, China. World Health Organization (WHO) described it as an infectious disease characterized by mild to moderate fever, sore throat, fatigue, dry cough, dyspnoea, dehydration, pale skin, and irritability especially in children. The degree of its severity depends on age and underlying health condition. Nigerian government made frantic efforts to stop the spread of the virus on its confirmation in the country by strengthening surveillance at five international airports, establishment of corona virus group and activation of its incident system. Other preventive steps were lockdown and curfew measures across the nation as well as the establishment of the WHO Information Network for Epidemics. However, these measures were not effective in containing the viral spread due to some barriers such as stigmatization of infected people, under- testing, fear, non- compliance to WHO COVID-19 control and preventive rules. This paper reviews these barriers and the role of health education in reducing them. It concludes that public health education at all levels remains the panacea for controlling the deadly viral spread where every other measure fails. The paper recommends that there should be health education towards positive behavioural change and health educators should be recruited and posted to all the isolation centres in the federation to educate infected persons on the need to stay in the centres until they test negative to the virus.