Overwhelming and disjointed information about the novel COVID-19 has caused misconceptions and raised fear among people in the world, also in Africa. What was originally meant to be meaningful information has been misconstrued to mean that being infected with the virus automatically leads to a death sentence.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, stigma has become a critical issue in Africa. Inaccurate stereotypes have been formed and now many African countries are struggling with the issue of stigma in addition to the growing list of the impact of the virus. There have been several accounts of stigmatization against different groups of people: recovered patients, healthcare professionals and returnees from abroad.

Two African women engage and fight against stigmatization of people

HomeDoctors is a creation by Fauzia Mohamed, and Joanna Amoah. Both are AfrikaKommt! Fellows from Kenya and Ghana respectively. They have developed HomeDoctors as a digital public health animation platform, which focuses on sensitization, and education on different health-related topics. It captures typical conversations between two African women. The women’s familiarity to each other allows for honest conversations and dramatic expressions. The main characters, Mami and Nia represent typical hard-working African mothers who earn a living by engaging in small businesses. In this first episode, Mami and Nia in partnership with Making More Health, Wilo Group and Bosch Power Tools seek to address the issue of stigma during COVID-19 times.

Have a look at the animation!

You can download the animation here for free in several languages.

Feel free to share! And let us know what you think about it.