It’s easy to take successful public health campaigns for granted. Once behaviour has become a habit, or a vaccination programme is established, it hard to imagine life without it. But the defeat of disease and the end of harmful behaviours takes concerted team effort and ideas that work.
Here are some of the best public health campaigns in the global south, recommended by our community for the impact they had on ending preventable diseases.
Helping each other act responsibly together (Heart) to reduce HIV, Zambia, 1990s-2000s
Helping each other act responsibly together (Heart) was a campaign to raise awareness and reduce the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus in Zambia. It focused on young people, messages to “abstain or use a condom every time you have sex” were formed with their input and disseminated via billboards, print, TV and radio.
In 2009 a follow-up campaign, One Love, Kwasila!, used multimedia to spread messages about how the virus can spread the through multiple and concurrent sex partners. A TV series called Club Risky Business featured three men exchanging tales of their relationships in a bar. A question was posed at the end of each episode for viewers to respond to via text. Over 17,000 texts were received and the campaign then sent targeted HIV awareness messages to these numbers.
Recommended by Uttara Bharath Kumar, senior programme officer, John Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs.
Oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea, Bangladesh, 1979
During the 1980s, specially trained female health workers visited 13 million households in the country and taught women face-to-face how to make oral rehydration therapy (ORT) at home with salt and sugar. Because of this campaign Bangladesh now has the highest use rate of ORT in the world (over 80%).
Recommended by Ahmed Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury, vice chair and interim executive director, Brac.
World Vision India HIV awareness campaign for people with a disability, 2009
All too often disabled people miss out on the benefits of public health campaigns as they do not target them directly. In the case of HIV and Aids, it is often assumed that it does not apply to disabled people. In 2009 World Vision India ran a campaign to raise awareness of HIV and Aids among people with a disability. They developed tailored programmes and significantly raised awareness of the disease among disabled people. A key part of their campaign was to work with medical professionals and carers to change attitudes and highlight the prevalence of the disease.
Stevie Kent, senior programme manager, Sense International.
Wazazi Nipendeni (Love me, parents), Tanzania, 2012
Wazazi Nipendeni is one of the largest mobile health projects in Africa to date. Pregnant women enrol to receive free text messages with health advice timed to their stage of pregnancy, such as when to attend antenatal care, and when to take malaria medication. Even in the poorest section of society one-in-three Tanzanian households owns a mobile phone, offering a targeted communication channel to pregnant women in rural areas with low access to conventional media. So far the campaign has reached over 300,000 women.
Recommended by Dr Sion Williams, doctor at Berega Mission Hospital, Morogoro, Tanzania.
Vaccination Weeks in the Americas, 2003-present
After a measles outbreak in Venezeula and Colombia in 2002, health ministers in the Andean states (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezeula and Colombia) planned a coordinated effort to prevent future outbreaks. The first Vaccination Week in the Americas was 2003 and since then more than 465 million people of all ages have been vaccinated against diseases such as measles, rubella, yellow fever, diphtheria, tetanus, polio and influenza. The media campaigns for the week include endorsements from popular Latin American celebrities.
Recommended by Leticia Linn, WHO regional office for the Americas.