In sustaining its drive to sensitize and educate local communities across Nigeria on personal hygiene guidelines for curbing the ongoing community spread of Corona Virus, the private sector coalition against COVID-19 (CA-COVID) has received the backing of the Obi of Onitsha Kingdom, His Royal Highness Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe CFR. The Royal Father while speaking recently from ‘Ime Obi’ gave kudos to CA-COVID for its work and stressed the importance of everyone taking personal responsibility to prevent the further spread of the virus. Obi Achebe reiterated the reality of COVID-19, the fact that anyone can contract the virus, and the sad loss of several lives in Nigeria over the past few months owing to the pandemic.
The Obi while speaking during his sensitization message, stated that “Over the past few months in Nigeria, we have lost a lot of our brothers and sisters to Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus and it is therefore important that we all take personal responsibility for preventing the spread of Covid-19. I therefore commend the efforts of the CA-COVID team in supporting the government in the fight against COVID-19.” Obi Achebe further urged all and sundry to “please adhere to the personal safety measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19.” He also went on to spell out the range of measures that include; correct wearing of protective face masks publicly, the practice of social distancing and avoidance of crowded places, staying indoors as much as possible and proper handwashing regularly according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.
The purpose of CA-COVID’s nationwide personal hygiene sensitization drive in collaboration with Traditional Leaders, is to ensure that the message about personal responsibility and personal hygiene is driven deeply into local communities in order to stop the transmission of Corona Virus from person-to-person, because community spread has been identified as the greatest enabler of Covid-19 spread in Nigeria.
The Coalition Against Covid-19 (CA-COVID) is a Private Sector task force working in partnership with the Federal Government of Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). CA-COVID has a singular vision of eradicating Covid-19 from Nigeria and Africa at large by committing to its ongoing mission of; providing direct support to private and public healthcare facilities; providing funds to set up several testing, isolation and treatment centers in all geo-political zones and aggressively increasing general public’s awareness, education and buy-in to prevent panic and resulting chaos.
CA-COVID remains unrelenting in its efforts to galvanize all stakeholders into action against Covid-19 and believes that through a strong collaboration with key institutions like Traditional Leaders, the critical message about personal hygiene and personal safety observance will be sufficiently circulated, accepted and practiced to the end that Corona Virus is defeated in Nigeria
