CHAMPS gives feedback results to the community of Emdeni
The community engaged with CHAMPS representative very well during the meeting which had a question-and-answer session.
Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS), a programme under the Wits-VIDA which aims to improve the health of mothers and children in Soweto hosted a community feedback meeting on June 13 at Emdeni.
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In 2022, HDSS surveillance collected the health and wellbeing data from different households in Soweto.
The purpose of the meeting was to provide the outcomes found by CHAMPS regarding the data collected and also engage the community to understand the context in which maternal problems and the child death are happening.
According to the community liaison officer, Sello Mokoena this education and information will help the community in a sense that they will become aware of the nutrition that must be provided to children.
The importance of not ignoring the visitation of alternative clinics and also grab information about things that may affect the health of a child or children during pregnancy up until the age of five years.
“What has led to our visitation today is that the statistics of 2011 highlighted that in per 1000 live births there are 50 plus children who are dying within communities and Emdeni is one of them.
“So the intervention has caused a programme called CHAMPS to try and track diseases from pregnancy,” said Mokoena.
The community of Emdeni engaged with CHAMPS representative very well during the meeting which had a question-and-answer session.
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“We were taught important lessons today and most of those things we didn’t know.
“Coming here did benefit me positively and I would like this kind of initiative to continue happening so that the community can have knowledge about the importance of health,” said Emdeni resident, Francina Madube.
The programme aims to continue assisting and understanding the community perception, cultural norms and myths that influence disease occurrence and subsequent prevention. It also plans to continue monitoring the health of children aged five years and below.
“We are very happy as the CHAMPS programme to see people from the community coming in numbers because most of the time the community tend to think that us as researchers, we are going to make them guinea pigs, so seeing them here shows that they are interested in engaging with us,” said Duduzile Ziqubu a Nurse.
