Community-based Avian Influenza Prevention

A key strategy shaping this initiative is bringing children together with parents, and with teachers, to learn - mostly through face-to-face activities enhanced by colourful printed materials - about what avian influenza is, and how to take action to prevent the potential spread of the disease. [Recommended preventative behaviours include maintaining good hygienic habits, separating domestic from wild birds, and cooking poultry meat and eggs at over 75 degrees Celsius].

For example, children and their parents in a rural community near Gorazde gathered to listen to a description of how to recognise sick domestic birds and how to avoid potential risk in their everyday lives. Along these lines, organisers have sought to reach those without access to mass media through the initiative's mobile team "Super-bus", which involves direct communication with children and their parents in remote communities.

Organisers claim that this direct and interactive method of interpersonal communication is powerful in that health workers, social services personnel, teachers, and volunteers can be in close contact with families that are hard to reach through mainstream mass media channels. For instance, SOS Kinderdorf has held a series of face-to-face discussions with children and their parents in schools, playgroups, and local communities in Goražde and its surroundings (with similar activities scheduled in 3 additional municipalities).

A focus on the particular needs of children in terms of communicating information about avian influenza is reflected in such activities as in-person communication within the school system. Pre-school teachers, for example, are helping children read what organisers describe as child-friendly printed materials with messages designed to reinforce recommended behaviours. These materials include colourful illustrations meant to be intriguing yet informative, such as a cartoon portraying a boy with a chicken on his head, with text providing instruction in simple language.

Partnership with civil society organisations has been a strategy shaping these efforts. For instance, the international non-governmental organisation (NGO) SOS Kinderdorf included a 30-minute workshop on avian influenza in their regular programme focused on "family strengthening". UNICEF is also partnering with the Association of Farmers' Cooperatives in an effort to bring simple and understandable advice to small-scale poultry farmers throughout the country. As part of collaborations like these, UNICEF and its national partners produce informative materials and educate journalists and editors.

Health.

According to UNICEF, although avian influenza has not documented in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 15 months (as of this writing), specialists call for vigilance, warning that the virus is mutating. However, a vaccine against this strain cannot be produced, as it does not yet exist.

UNICEF's figures indicate that almost half of fatalities caused by avian influenza have been children; those living in rural areas are particularly vulnerable. As part of an effort to bring information to another at-risk population, UNICEF will also continue the communication-centred initiative described above in Roma communities.