COVID vaccination messages released in Indigenous languages

The Ministry of Health has released a series of audio COVID-19 vaccination messages in the nine indigenous languages to ensure that Guyana’s First Peoples understand the impact of the disease and how to protect themselves.

Minister Anthony made this disclosure during Tuesday’s COVID-19 update.

“In an effort to reach people and to get over these messages, the Ministry has been able to hire someone who translated messages pertaining to vaccination, the importance of vaccination, the safety of vaccines in all of the indigenous languages.    

We have been playing these as PSAs on the various radio stations and when people go into the community, they have the PSAs that they can walk with so as to use that to explain to people,” he said.

Apart from the indigenous languages, some persons in other regions also speak a mixture of Portuguese and English or Portuguese, and in other areas, Spanish.

Dr Anthony said the Ministry has been able to work with those bilingual or trilingual persons to get the vaccination messages across.  

Meanwhile, the Minister is again appealing to faith-based organisations to inform their adherents of the importance of vaccination. 

To date, 247,940 adults in Guyana have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 130, 785 have been fully vaccinated against the disease.