Category: Infectious Disease

Community Health Worker Related

WiRED Community Health Workers in Kenya

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WiRED International’s community health workers (CHWs) in Kisumu, Kenya, continue to be a beacon for their communities, providing guidance, information and support for health issues. Their work is particularly important in these pandemic times, as they provide health surveillance for other illnesses such as pneumonia and cholera which could be overlooked without their monitoring. From September 1 to September 27, 14 CHWs reached 6,679 people with health services on topics such as malnutrition, hypertension, pneumonia and HIV/AIDS.

Global Health

Protect Yourself and Your Loved Ones

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During the COVID-19 crisis, when life can feel stressful and out of control, you have the power to protect yourself, your family and your community from some of the worst diseases on the planet.

As the world waits for a COVID-19 vaccine, it is important to remember that vaccinations can prevent more than 20 other life-threatening diseases such as polio, tetanus, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, cancers caused by HPV, pneumonia, meningitis, shingles and more.

Community Health Worker Related

WIRED Community Health Workers Report from Kenya

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In low-resource communities around the world, people often are unsure about basic health practices, such as proper handwashing techniques and safe food preparation, much less how to protect themselves from COVID-19.

WiRED International brought our Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Program to Kisumu, Kenya earlier this year, and since then graduates of the month-long course are tending to the health of the populations they serve.

Global Health

COVID-19 and Airborne Transmission

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As much as we continue to learn about COVID-19, there is much we still don’t know.

Government guidance can be inaccurate, indecisive and even political, while the epidemiologists, scientists and world health agencies continue their research to nail down the transmission risks and prevention measures.

Global Health

Thoughts on Coping with the COVID-19 Crisis

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WiRED International staff writers Olivia and Meghan Spirito sat down with their parents, Christopher and Jennifer, during a family dinner to discuss how COVID-19 is affecting their lives and to share their thoughts on volunteering for WiRED. The sisters came up with questions before dinner to ask each other and their parents. They recorded their answers during the dinner and then wrote the conversation down for this article.

Community Health Worker Related

COVID-19 Myth Busters

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Myths about COVID-19 continue to circulate around the Internet. Misinformation ranges from the laughable (the virus arrived from outer space!) to the dangerous (hydroxychloroquine or bleach cure the virus). Conspiracy theories suggest that Greta Thunberg caused COVID-19 to help with climate change or that hand sanitizer companies invented the virus as a marketing scheme.

Climate Change

WiRED Team in Kenya Takes Action against COVID-19

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The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to Kisumu, Kenya, is placing a heavy burden on a population already suffering routinely from disease and lack of basic health care. If that weren’t enough, since early 2020, East Africa has experienced unprecedented waves of locust swarms — a crisis linked to climate change — which has destroyed livestock and crops and threatens to worsen food scarcity.