Cocoa360 is leading Ghana's rural response to COVID-19. We're piloting a two-phased COVID preparedness and prevention plan dubbed CoCoPOPP, which will focus heavily on Public Health prevention and control measures in Tarkwa Breman and its 7 surrounding villages.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, government programs focused on urban centers where the infection rates are highest with little or no attention given the rural communities that are more vulnerable. Tarkwa Breman and its surrounding 7 villages are nestled deep in the rainforest of Ghana's western region. Like many rural communities, access to quality healthcare is a challenge. This challenge is exacerbated by the lack of roads and access routes to some of the more remote areas.
CoCoPOPP is designed with a heavy focus on prevention through education and the implementation of control measures in rural centers, while actively connecting potential disease cases with the nearest health facilities in the cities. Our clinic staff will train and deploy designated Front Liners who will be responsible for distributing accurate information as well as tracing potential outbreaks and transporting those cases to the designated regional hospitals for treatment.
An integral part of the CoCoPoPP intervention is research. The team will conduct a pre and post study of knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and perceptions of risk of COVID-19 following community education and training and conduct a qualitative and quantitative assessment of benefits of clinic response in light of COVID in a rural setting as a means to understand the effectiveness of the intervention to inform future public health interventions of this nature.
