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Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
BEITBRIDGE Municipality in conjunction with Christian Care has conducted training for rapid response teams as part of efforts to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

There has been a rise in Covid-19 cases as the virus spreads in the border town, mostly due to its proximity to South Africa.

The local authority’s environmental health officer, Mr Pio Muchena, said they had trained various stakeholders drawn from the district Covid-19 task-force.

He said the program was in direct response to the ever-rising number of Covid-19 infections. “The whole idea is to strengthen our rapid response teams in the urban areas to contain the spread of Covid-19,” said Mr Muchena.

“We are also going to be forming sub-rapid response teams which feed into the main team being coordinated by the District Medical Officer specifically for Covid-19 and water and sanitation health (WASH) issues.

During the current training, we have been sensitising each other in areas where we are seeing gaps in terms of coordination.”

He said the municipality had engaged a partner, Christian Care to help roll out the programme.

“Our target here is the reaction to issues which are pertinent mainly health and water and sanitation, which are important in dealing with the pandemic. Most issues coming up are the need to offer psycho-social support to the frontline workers. There is too much anxiety,” he said.

Mr Muchena said there was a need for counseling services for those dealing with Covid-19 related matters including returnees and local patients.

He said they were working with the local Civil Protection Unit to ensure there was smooth coordination of operations.