The outbreak of the pandemic has yet registered a number of impacts in our community both social life, physical life, economical life, and spiritual life. On the side of the young, many have had a lot more time at home, many have adopted addictive behaviors, many have acquired HIV, many have gotten early pregnancies, many have lost their academic goals, and many may not be going back to schools, hence increased rates of school drop-outs. The earlier prioritized measures amongst the young people; both on HIV prevention and reproductive health awareness all came to a stand-still, as many of these Youth centers were not working effectively during the lockdown and much priority was given to the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the fact that it was a new illness and scientists were still getting acquainted with its mode of infection and modes of transmission, as well as finding ways on how they could contain the pandemic. Most of our communities have been shaped to adopt the new normal in the post-lockdown era.
However the COVID-19 Pandemic has severely hit the entire world, where many have lost their loved ones, some are still coping-up with the COVID-19 related morbidities, many of our frontline health workers have succumbed due to the Pandemic, and most of our health systems are still struggling on how to accommodate the high number of COVID-19 cases.
There are various myths amongst young people related to COVID-19 (some believe that COVID is a disease that only catches the elderly, some believe that COVID is a means for the western world to faze-out the African populations, whereas some believe that COVID is just political and that there is no COVID in Africa, it’s just exaggerated by their leaders to get more donations from the western world).
At WESHARE-Uganda, our task is therefore big that these young people are sensitized more about COVID-19, and to allay all the myths that are surrounding their societies.