NONTHABURI, Feb 13 (TNA) — The Department of Health Service Support and Advanced Wireless Network Co signed a memorandum of understanding to use application software to educate health volunteers on the novel coronavirus as they will soon play important roles in disease control.
Deputy Public Health Minister Sathit Pitutecha said that both organizations would disseminate information about Covid-19 and protection via mobile phone application to local health volunteers because health authorities expected that the new coronavirus might spread in communities in the future.
Health volunteers would share the knowledge with local people so that they could protect themselves from the virus and thus help contain it, Mr Sathit said. The shared knowledge will include the homemade production of face masks and hand wash gel and hygienic habits.
“Health volunteers in villages will play important roles in detecting patients including those who return from other countries and they will also take care of young children and elderly people who are risk groups,” the deputy public health minister said.
Dr Tharet Kratnaiyarawiwong, director-general of the Department of Health Service Support, said the application made information dissemination faster than conventional communication channels.
About 200,000 out of 1.04 million village-based health volunteers used the application and they could help relieve the shortages of face masks and hand wash gel when the coronavirus spread in communities, he said. (TNA)
