The Director General (DG) of the West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO) DrJoëlAïssi Melchior, has congratulated the new President of ECOWAS RCCE Network, Dr Da Costa Aboagye, and charges him to use his position to facilitate experience sharing, advocacy, learning and promotion of better health through building stronger risk communication systems in the fifteen ECOWAS member states.
The DG pledged full support from WAHO in terms of resources and commitment to promote healthy lives through regional integration.
Dr Melchior disclosed this at a three-day ECOWAS Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) in Lomé last week.
The engagement was to strengthen the RCCE pillar in the preparation and response to public health events in the region and discuss the level of implementation of communication of community engagement details in Member States.
The communication specialists also worked on challenges and identified solutions and perspectives which were all put in a roadmap and presented by the president of the network, Dr Da Costa Aboagye to the Director General of WAHO, DrJoëlAïssi Melchior.
According to DrAboagye, the role of RCCE in health system strengthening could not be overlooked by ECOWAS, but to be strengthened for better health outcomes.
He further noted that each of the communicators poses the greatest risk to himself and to the community.
“A communicator, beyond a transmitter of information, is a valuable tool for society because he measures his gestures and actions. The communicator is obliged to pay close attention to what he does, to what he says and to observe in society whether his message is followed. It’s the complexity. He is very different from a journalist and a simple transmitter of information”, DrAboagye added.
The RCCE network has existed since 2019 and its presence in Lomé demonstrates a collective commitment to develop with the Regional Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control of WAHO ECOWAS, strengthening of the pillars of communication on risks and community commitments.