Saniya : a public health communications programme in a West African town

This document presents a proposal to employ Public Health Communications combined with community participation approaches to promote safer hygiene practices amongst women and children in the town of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. The proposal is to intervene to reduce the incidence of intestinal infection and to develop an effective communications and community liaison resource for health promotion. The project will also act as an applied research project to measure the impact of the intervention programme on the hygiene behaviour of mothers and children, to calculate its cost-effectiveness, and to find out which approaches are the most effective and why. The results will be made widely available to decision makers and planners through a series of publications and manuals. The proposal presents a communications plan which details the key objectives; practices and messages; the target groups; the channels of communication to be employed including women's groups, radio and theatre, and primary schools; the candidate communication strategies; training; information support and materials production. Supervision, monitoring and evaluation/research activities are also described in this document. Work is expected to begin in early 1995, to take three years and to cost about US$ 175000 per year.