Door to door in Bauchi: what sensitization actually sounds like

Sensitization is a word that can hide a lot of shouting. In Bauchi we tried the opposite. Volunteers walked with colleagues from the State Ministry of Health and from BACTMA, stopped at verandas, and asked permission to talk. The subject was NTDs and malaria. The method was listening first.

People already have explanations for fever, for rashes, for a child who is tired all term. Some of those explanations are right. Some are dangerous. You do not win that conversation by talking over a grandmother. You win it by standing with a community health worker she already trusts.

Partnership is a route, not a logo on a banner

World NTD Day with BACTMA, mosquito-trapping conversations on World Mosquito Day, a football competition in Kaduna that pulled youth who would never sit through a lecture — these are different doors into the same house. The house is this: prevention has to live where people already gather.

If we cannot explain it on a veranda, we have not explained it.

Door-to-door is slow. It does not photograph as well as a road walk. It is also how rumours die and how a household decides to sleep under the net tonight, not after payday. We will keep doing both.