Public health practitioners recount their experience of the COVID-19 infodemic: 2nd edition
The infodemic has affected health professionals personally and professionally and changed the way health systems have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 15 December 2022, we will showcase 4 French speaking Infodemic Managers to tell their own personal experiences about managing the Infodemic during the time of COVID-19.
The event will be in French, is free and will be brought to you in partnership with The Story Collider to promote science and health through more effective storytelling.
Background
This live show is part of several online events and activities that the WHO has convened to collect and analyze stories of the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic. The project launched in July 2022, with a discussion of why storytelling is not just a tool for promoting conversations about science, but it is also a skill that every infodemic manager should have. Watch the video recording of the opening webinar about this project:
Following our webinar, WHO launched an online infodemic management workshop to collect stories from emergency responders and health professionals who experienced and managed the COVID19 infodemic. They have gone through workshops where they sharpened their storytelling skills to communicate about infodemics, their impact and how to contribute to infodemic management practice.
The workshops received over 500 registrations from 110 countries for 80 places in four storytelling skills workshops in English, French, and Spanish. Selected participants received 6 hours of workshop training with further one-on-one coaching to develop their experiences into stories. After the month-long workshop, the participants were invited to record and submit their stories to a research project on the impacts of the COVID-19 infodemic on responders.
The stories submitted were so engaging that WHO decided to invite some of the participants to share them with a wider audience. Three live storytelling shows with three stories each are planned between November and February 2023. This will be the second storytelling show in French, following the first one in English in November.
Biographies
Dr Guy Saidi is a Medical Doctor by training, specialising in humanitarian aid, planning, monitoring and evaluation and project reporting. He has 8 years of experience in health emergency management and since 2018 he has been working at the WHO emergency programme in DRC and is currently based at the WHO country office in Kinshasa.
Rostand ADDA is a research assistant in clinical pharmacy at the Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI). He holds a PhD in pharmacy from the University Mohammed V of Rabat, Morocco and a master's degree in public health from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Before joining LDRI, he worked with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Morocco where he supervised various projects and interventions in the field of migration and health as well as humanitarian assistance to vulnerable migrants.
Élodie Ho is a humanitarian worker with 11 years of experience in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for international NGOs and UN agencies. She earned a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2017, with a focus on social behaviour change. In 2020, Elodie joined the Africa Infodemic Response Alliance (AIRA) as Country Support Officer and worked closely with WHO and partners in various African countries. She is now the AIRA Coordinator and her role is to mobilise and coordinate efforts between UN agencies, NGOs, media and fact-checking organisations, and research institutes to limit the spread of misinformation in Africa.
Vicky Tambwe Mbuyu is a medical doctor by training since 2003 and also has a master's degree in public health. He is trained as an infection control manager against COVID-19 and in infection prevention and control (IPC). He is married with five children and lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. He is fluent in French, Lingala, and Swahili and speaks English reasonably well. Currently, he supervises the COVID-19 vaccination centre for routine vaccines and campaigns on the acceleration plan vaccine uptake.
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