Sr Bridget Lacey Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary in Liberia are attempting to tackle Covid-19 through passing vital information between rural villages.
Sr Bridget Lacey, one of the founders of Social Empowerment Through Learning, said: “Our aim of what we’re doing in Covid-19 is to prevent villages from getting the virus.
“We are currently working with around 300 villages in Lofa County.”
The sisters are training people they work with to repeatedly visit villages to give them correct information on hand-washing, social distancing and the spread of the virus.
“We are providing buckets and soap in villages, as many as we can afford to give. It’s expensive to do, it is expensive to have people going from place to place providing buffet buckets and soap but we’re trying.
Bucket
“Many people can’t afford to have a bucket specifically sitting there for washing hands and getting water is difficult for people, people go long distances from the villages sometimes to get water,” said Sr Lacey who is currently in Ireland on a longer stay than planned due to Covid-19.
She says there is a lot of misinformation and false news spreading in the country, making people scared to access necessary healthcare and use their water pumps as needed.
Irishwoman Sr Pat Murray, executive secretary of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), said recently that women religious “are on the front lines” in preventing the spread of Covid-19 and treating the sick.
In the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, Mercy Sr Mary Killeen is in charge of the Mukuru Promotion Centre (MPC) provides education, healthcare and social rehabilitation services to 8,000 children and adults every day.
They recently began making face masks which will be distributed in slums around the city.
“I have worked around the slums for very many years but I have never seen poverty affect the people in Mukuru as it has from last year.
“And it has gotten worse now due to the curfew meant to reduce the spread of Covid-19,” she said.