30 Mar Community Response to Covid-19: Moury Rahman’s Story

Moury, currently a Senior Public Health Officer with Oxfam in the Rohingya Influx, has been a Rising Star since 2015.

Being a part of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Promotion (WASH) team, they have trained community-based volunteers and oriented the key stakeholders including Majhi(community leader), Imam, and shopkeepers on CoronaVirus symptoms, transmission, prevention, and referral system to the camp-based health centres. They are supporting to disseminate the information related to this virus prevention and raising awareness about handwashing, personal hygiene management, food hygiene, and solid waste management from house to house. On this regards, her team has targeted the entire camp to ensure the presence of tippy-tap (cost-effective soapy-water bottle made by the community themselves using a bit of detergent powder or soap with water in an available water bottle) in front of all the households and latrine to wash hands at critical times. Soap distribution and handwashing device installation in communal places and near to the latrine has been completed in the targeted areas. Along with the mandatory hygiene-related message dissemination, handwashing demonstrations are being shown to the individual household members, follow up with the people who have flu to ensure they visit doctors, maintaining a safe distance with others around, and getting cured by having medications. In addition to this, rumour tracking is also ongoing to find out community’s perception and feedback about CoronaVirus to make sure they address this finding to improvise the program activities in overcoming the rumours.

Moury says, “Wedu taught me to take the lead to fight for the community’s betterment in any situation and I am confident about my leadership skills, which has been allowing me to join in the humanitarian emergency response and work in this fragile context for last two and half years.”

In this current situation where everyone is concerned about Covid-19, she urges everyone to not think twice to stand up for the people around us who need our support to stay healthy and safe, because at the end of the day, we alone cannot fight to stay safe alone.